“The Great Pyramid at Giza is known to have an amazing character of concavity that each of its four faces is slightly indented along its central line, from base to peak,” explained Akio Kato from the Department of Mathematics and Physics at Kanagawa University, Japan, in a 2023 paper.
“In other words, the Great Pyramid is a concave octagonal pyramid rather than the standard square pyramid. This concavity is [too] subtle to be seen from any ground position, but can be observed from the air.” …
Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC) today announced that CEO Pat Gelsinger retired from the company after a distinguished 40-plus-year career and has stepped down from the board of directors, effective Dec. 1, 2024…
Intel has named two senior leaders, David Zinsner and Michelle (MJ) Johnston Holthaus, as interim co-chief executive officers while the board of directors conducts a search for a new CEO…
Exactly eight years ago this week, then-House Speaker Paul Ryan appeared on “60 Minutes” and talked to CBS News’ Scott Pelley about his expectations for Donald Trump’s incoming administration. At the time, the Wisconsin Republican said he’d spoken to the then-president-elect “extensively” about constitutional limits and the separation of powers, and he was optimistic about the road ahead.
Ryan assured viewers that Trump felt “very strongly, actually, that under President Obama’s watch, he stripped a lot of power away from the Constitution, away from the legislative branch of government. And we want to reset the balance of power.”
Pelley, somewhat surprised, asked, “You don’t think [Trump] thinks he’s going to run this country the way he wants to?” Ryan responded, “No, I think he understands there’s a Constitution.”
Eight years later, it’s hard to know whether to laugh or cry. Trump might very well have wanted to “reset the balance of power,” but despite the then-speaker’s confidence, it certainly wasn’t in Congress’ favor.
As the president-elect eyes a second term, Ryan’s assurances from 2016 appear even more absurd. The New York Times reported over the holiday weekend:
President-elect Donald J. Trump’s determination to crash over traditional governmental guardrails will present a fundamental test of whether the Republican-controlled Senate can maintain its constitutional role as an independent institution and a check on presidential power. With Mr. Trump putting forward a raft of contentious prospective nominees and threatening to challenge congressional authority in other ways, Republicans who will hold the majority come January could find themselves in the precarious position of having to choose between standing up for their institution or bowing to a president dismissive of government norms.
The Times’ analysis added that Trump’s ambitions risk doing “permanent damage to the Senate” and undermining the nation’s “constitutional system.”
[snipped details of Trump’s campaign rhetoric that emphasized his plans to consolidate federal power in his crime-committing hands]
The Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus recently published an important summary on this, highlighting the degree to which the president-elect is setting the stage for an “alarming takeover,” focused on “a vast, dangerous and unconstitutional expansion of presidential power.”
This agenda, Marcus added, “includes not just emasculating the Senate’s advice-and-consent role but also refusing to spend money that lawmakers have appropriated, curbing the independence of federal regulatory agencies and eviscerating the nonpartisan civil service.”
The same day, The New York Times’ Jamelle Bouie explained, “In our system, the executive branch cannot exercise the full power of the legislature. It cannot act as a monarch would. The sovereign people did not imbue their power into a leviathan. The upshot of this is that any interpretation of the Constitution that grants the president monarchical power is wrong. The structure of the Constitution precludes a royal prerogative, and the ethos of American democracy forbids it.”
It’s a vision that Trump appears eager to discard, rejecting the very idea of the separation of powers, and taking steps to seize additional governmental authority for himself.
The question then becomes what GOP members of Congress — ostensibly a co-equal branch of government — intend to do about it.
[…] the early evidence is hardly encouraging. Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, for example, recently told Fox News that Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance will soon be “running the Senate.”
The Alabaman added that, as far as he’s concerned, it’s not up to senators to “determine” whether Trump’s cabinet nominees have merit. […] pretending that the Constitution’s advise-and-consent authority doesn’t exist.
Around the same time, Republican Rep. Troy Nehls of Texas added, in reference to the president-elect, “He’s got a mission statement, his mission and his goals and objectives, whatever that is, we need to embrace it, all of it, every single word. … If Donald Trump says, ‘Jump three feet high and scratch your head,’ we all jump three feet high and scratch your heads. That’s it.”
The preservation of our constitutional system will require elected lawmakers standing up for their own power. Given the increasingly pitiful state of congressional Republicans, it’s difficult to be optimistic.
“A new report characterizes Pete Hegseth as a predatory racist with a substance abuse problem who badly mismanaged the only two organizations he ever led.”
It would be an overstatement to suggest that Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s scandal-plagued choice to lead the Department of Defense, has never overseen an organization. Pete Hegseth might be known to the public as a Fox News host, but he also ran two advocacy organizations: Veterans for Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America.
In theory, this might make his prospective Pentagon nomination appear slightly more credible. In practice, it’s not nearly that simple: The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer wrote a brutal new report indicating that Hegseth was forced to step down from his role in both groups “in the face of serious allegations of financial mismanagement, sexual impropriety, and personal misconduct.”
A previously undisclosed whistle-blower report on Hegseth’s tenure as the president of Concerned Veterans for America, from 2013 until 2016, describes him as being repeatedly intoxicated while acting in his official capacity—to the point of needing to be carried out of the organization’s events. The detailed seven-page report—which was compiled by multiple former C.V.A. employees and sent to the organization’s senior management in February, 2015—states that, at one point, Hegseth had to be restrained while drunk from joining the dancers on the stage of a Louisiana strip club, where he had brought his team. The report also says that Hegseth, who was married at the time, and other members of his management team sexually pursued the organization’s female staffers, whom they divided into two groups—the “party girls” and the “not party girls.”
The same report, which has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, added that Hegseth’s former colleagues complained about his groups operating under hostile workplace conditions and ignoring serious accusations of impropriety.
Mayer also spoke with one person who worked with Hegseth who said, “I’ve seen him drunk so many times. I’ve seen him dragged away not a few times but multiple times. To have him at the Pentagon would be scary.”
The same unnamed source added that when many Concerned Veterans for America employees heard Hegseth was under consideration to serve as secretary of defense, “it wasn’t ‘No,’ it was ‘Hell No!’”
[…] The New Yorker report doesn’t rely on a single source. Rather, it follows “a trail of documents, corroborated by the accounts of former colleagues,” which characterizes Hegseth as a predatory racist with a substance abuse problem who badly mismanaged the only two organizations he ever led.
The report also comes just days after The New York Times published a related report on a 2018 email Hegseth’s mother sent to him in which she accused him of routinely mistreating women and displaying a lack of character. (She later disavowed her message.)
Whether Trump and his team, who’ve largely rejected the idea of conducting background checks, were aware of any of these allegations is unclear.
Nevertheless, these allegations aren’t the only thing that should doom the prospects for the prospective Pentagon leader. We are, after all, talking about a right-wing television personality who’s argued, as recently as this month, that women in the armed forces shouldn’t be allowed to serve in combat roles. Hegseth has also talked about ousting military leaders from their positions if he considers them “woke.”
What’s more, he’s written bizarre and conspiratorial books, condemned the military’s ban on right-wing extremists, and peddled anti-Muslim rhetoric. Perhaps most importantly, a woman accused Hegseth of sexual assault in 2017, and while he’s denied the allegations, insisting the sexual encounter was consensual, the Fox News host paid his accuser an undisclosed amount of money in exchange for her staying quiet. (No charges were filed in the case.)
By any sane measure, Hegseth is the least qualified and most scandal-plagued Pentagon nominee in American history. In a healthy political environment, he wouldn’t even be considered for such a powerful and important leadership position.
He’ll be confirmed anyway unless four Senate Republicans step up and oppose him. Watch this space.
A new lawsuit filed by a current Apple employee accuses the company of spying on its workers via their personal iCloud accounts and non-work devices.
The suit, filed Sunday evening in California state court, alleges Apple employees are required to give up the right to personal privacy, and that the company says it can “engage in physical, video and electronic surveillance of them” even when they are at home and after they stop working for Apple.
Those requirements are part of a long list of Apple employment policies that the suit contends violate California law…
“There’s a legitimate controversy surrounding Joe Biden’s pardon for Hunter Biden, but given his scandalous record, Donald Trump ought to sit this one out.”
President Joe Biden’s son Hunter was facing the possibility of a prison sentence on federal gun charges and federal tax evasion charges. Thanks to a presidential pardon, the defendant no longer has anything to worry about. My MSNBC colleague Hayley Miller explained:
President Joe Biden on Sunday issued a “full and unconditional” pardon for his son Hunter Biden, who has been dogged by Republican attacks for years. … The pardon is expected to cover both his gun charges and his tax charges, reported NBC News, the first outlet to report on the decision. It covers any offenses the 54-year-old “has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024.”
There’s no shortage of angles to a story like this one, but broadly speaking, there are two sides to the story. On the one hand, there’s the outgoing president, who argued that his adult son wouldn’t even have been prosecuted if his last name weren’t Biden. The pardon, by this reasoning, is about advancing the cause of justice and righting a prosecutorial wrong.
On the other hand, there’s the simple fact that Biden publicly said he wouldn’t intervene in his son’s case and had no intention of issuing a presidential pardon. Then he did the opposite, causing an uproar among Republicans.
Complicating matters, both arguments have merit. Would Hunter Biden have faced a prison sentence if he weren’t related to the president? Probably not. Should presidents keep their word when they make public commitments? Of course. It’s relatively easy to make the case that, in this instance, both the president and his critics have a point.
The one person, however, who should sit this one out, is Donald Trump, who apparently couldn’t help himself.
Shortly after the White House announced the pardon for the incumbent president’s son, the Republican president-elect published an item to his social media platform that read, “Does the Pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years? Such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice!”
First, Jan. 6 criminals are not “hostages.”
[…] Trump’s record on pardons is arguably the worst in American history. During his first term, he effectively wielded his pardon power as a corrupt weapon, rewarding loyalists, completing cover-ups, undermining federal law enforcement, and doling out perverse favors to the politically connected.
Trump’s list of scandalous pardon abuses is so long, it could be a lengthy book. The names should be familiar: Paul Manafort. Michael Flynn. Steve Bannon. Roger Stone. Seven different Republican members of Congress who were locked up for corruption crimes.
Trump saw presidential pardons as get-out-of-jail-free cards for his friends and associates, engaging in the kind of brazen corruption that would’ve defined his term were it not eclipsed by other breathtaking scandals. [True!]
If prominent GOP voices want Biden to pay a political price for pardoning his son, fine. He said he wouldn’t do this, then he did it anyway, and in the process, he invited political attacks that are rooted in fact for a change.
But if Trump thinks he has the moral high ground on the issue, that’s bonkers.
Over the past couple weeks, the thought of President Biden pardoning his son entered my head a few times. I tossed it around: good or bad idea? I could see it both ways. I still can. But I am fine with his decision. I’m glad he did it. Biden learned the right lesson: no one gives a fuck about norms.
It’s unquestionably true that Hunter Biden wouldn’t be in this position if not for his dad. That’s basically the justification Biden gave. And he’s right. It may sound angry or cynical to say “no one gives a fuck.” But I mean it both in a general way and in this particular way: the reason for Biden not to do this was to allow his son to remain collateral damage of the GOP war against his presidency and to leave him in the hands of the Trump DOJ for at least the next four years all to make a point of principle about being better, different, more righteous, more norm-honoring than Donald Trump.
Truly. No one gives a fuck. If anything, that logic I just laid out sounds like one of those fastidious, hyper-process-oriented and baroque bits of reasoning that have of late left Democrats mesmerized while the real world is passing them by.
Either you know the difference or you don’t. This doesn’t shift the balance in anyone’s head.
A team of archaeologists uncovered a trove of weapons, armor, and other goods in Denmark, in advance of a motorway being built on the site.
The deposit is a weapon sacrifice—literally, the weapons were the things sacrificed. Over 1,500 years ago, an Iron Age community deposited over 100 lances, spears, swords, knives, arrowheads, and more across two houses on the site. Taken together, the deposit is a compelling look into the social and military wheelings and dealings of the group that inhabited the region.
Based on the way the items were deposited, the archaeological team concluded that the site was not a weapons workshop or a barracks—settings where piles of weapons would not be out of place…
The exact count of the metal objects found at the site is as follows: 119 lances and spears, eight swords, five knives, three arrowheads, one axe, one set of chainmail armor, fragments of at least two oath rings and a bugle, a bridle, and some yet-to-be identified objects.
The rings were bracteates: bronze medallions which would be worn around the neck and often expressed the wearers’ political or military allegiance. The bracteates were etched with a design reminiscent of the chainmail found at the site. According to the release, the chainmail is the first discovered on a settlement in southern Scandinavia, rather than in a burial or other deposit…
Can We Stay Focused On Trump Firing The FBI Director?
Donald Trump’s holiday weekend announcement glossed over the fact that he will fire FBI Director Christopher Wray before the end of his 10-year term. The rest of us don’t have to accept that gloss. The politically motivated firing of Wray as retribution is the scandal. It will be the second FBI director fired by Trump: Wray was appointed by Trump to replace James Comey, whom he fired in 2017.
Ever since Trump won the election, the coverage of his firing of the FBI director has been muted, framed more around the parlor game of who Trump will name as Wray’s replacement, with some concern about what this or that potential nominee could do to undermine the rule of law. But the firing of the FBI director on specious grounds as political payback for leading validly predicated investigations into Trump himself is itself undermining of the rule of law.
Kash Patel is an appalling figure who is as unqualified and dangerous as the failed Matt Gaetz was for attorney general. That, too, is a scandal. But before GOP senators are forced to defend the Patel nomination, they need to be made to answer for why they’re sanctioning Trump’s corrupt firing of the FBI director.
Additional news is presented as part of Talking Points “Morning Memo” at that link.
The Trump Fathers-in-Law
Donald Trump plans to name two of his children’s fathers-in-law to positions in his new administration:
Convicted-but-pardoned-by Trump Charles Kushner, father of Jared Kushner, as ambassador to France; and
Lebanese-born billionaire Massad Boulos, father-in-law of Tiffany Trump, as senior adviser on Arab and Middle Eastern affairs.
Reginald Selkirksays
@6, 7 Lynna OM
One framing I haven’t seen yet:
When did Biden promise not to pardon his son? Was it back when he was still a candidate? If it was a campaign promise, then it could be considered no longer binding when Biden dropped out of the presidential race.
But honestly, I just don’t give a fuck, mostly due to the double standards issue.
Donald Trump announced over the holiday weekend that he wants to add yet more unqualified rich people to serve in his administration, but this time with a fun and added twist: They’re both members of his family.
On Saturday, Trump nominated Charles Kushner—a felon, real estate slumlord, and the father of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner—to serve as ambassador to France.
And on Sunday, Trump announced he’d picked Massad Boulos—the billionaire father-in-law to his least-favorite child Tiffany Trump—to serve as a senior adviser on Arab and Middle Eastern affairs.
Selecting family members to serve in his administration would amount to a violation of anti-nepotism laws that other federal employees must operate under—not that Trump cares about that sort of thing.
Federal government employees shall not “appoint, employ, promote, advance, or advocate for appointment, employment, promotion, or advancement, in or to a civilian position any individual who is a relative,” according to 5 U.S. Code § 2302.
However, when Trump was in office the first time around, he got the Department of Justice to change its interpretation of the rules to allow him to hire his daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, as senior advisers.
Both of them declined to take salaries in their positions in an effort to knock down accusations of nepotism in Trump. But a report from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Government found that the couple made as much as $640 million during their time in the White House, in large part thanks to their stake in the now-defunct Trump Hotel in Washington, D.C., where people, including members of foreign governments, stayed and spent money in order to curry favor with Trump.
Trump also helped install his daughter-in-law Lara Trump—wife of failson Eric Trump—as co-chair of the Republican National Committee, where she helped get Trump through the presidential primary and then elected again in November.
The Associated Press reported in May that her tenure at the RNC caused friction with Republicans.
From the article:
Her installation has raised concerns among some Republicans who say the RNC is being run in ways that could harm its mandate to help all its candidates up and down the ballot. By prioritizing the presidential campaign, they said, the RNC might not be able to dedicate the necessary resources to assist other office seekers.
“It kind of suggests an expectation of complete, unabashed and, perhaps, a blind loyalty to the candidate,” said Marc Racicot, a former RNC chair who served as Montana’s governor for eight years.
Now, Donald Trump wants his children’s in-laws to serve in his administration—both of whom have damaging baggage.
Reuters reported that Boulos’ own father-in-law funded the Free Patriotic Movement in Lebanon, which has ties with the terrorist group Hezbollah.
Meanwhile, Charles Kushner was convicted in 2005 and sentenced to 24 months in prison for filing false tax returns, lying to the Federal Election Commission, and retaliating against a witness. Kushner admitted to hiring a prostitute to seduce his sister’s husband and film him having sex to intimidate him into not testifying in a federal investigation into whether Kushner made illegal campaign contributions.
In December 2020, Trump pardoned Kushner, in part, according to the White House statement at the time, because it had the support of conservative activist Matt Schlapp, head of the American Conservative Union, who was later accused of sexual assault and settled a lawsuit over the claims for nearly half a million dollars.
While Boulos does not need to be confirmed to his advisory role, Kushner needs to win over a majority of senators in order to become ambassador to France.
It’s unclear whether Kushner’s shady past and the fact that his nomination is a blatant violation of anti-nepotism laws will hinder that in a GOP-controlled Senate that has excused far worse in order to give Trump what he wants.
[…] Kash Patel has authored three children’s books that are pro-Trump fan fiction. [Really awful book covers are shown at the link]
“The Plot Against the King” is described by the publisher as a “fantastical retelling of Hillary’s horrible plot against Trump” and features a character named “Kash the Distinguished Discoverer” defending King Donald Trump.
The second book, “The Plot Against the King: 2,000 Mules,” is a fictionalized version of pro-Trump conspiracy theorist Dinesh D’Souza’s debunked lies about the 2020 election being stolen. The blurb details a “terrible scheme to elect Sleepy Joe instead of King Donald on Choosing Day.”
In “The Plot Against the King 3: The Return of the King,” the story is about the “Journey of the MAGA King as he returns to take down Comma-la-la-la and reclaim his throne.”
These books are authored by the person who Trump wants to lead the premier law enforcement agency in the United States, responsible for the safety and security of hundreds of millions of people.
“All The Right Idiots VERY Upset Joe Biden Pardoned Hunter”
“It’s a bad day for the norms, and a good day for people who aren’t morons.”
Here is how you know that Joe Biden did a good thing by pardoning his son Hunter […] for any and all federal crimes that convicted felon Donald Trump and his band of merry lickspittles might try to pin on him after January 20: some of the worst shithead pundits in our debased polity are galactically mad about it.
Bretbug Stephens of the august New York Times opinion section? Mad. Jonathan Chait, recently called home to his natural reactionary centrist habitat at The Atlantic? Mad. Matt Yglesias, who less than six months ago said the president should pardon his son because Hunter “is being perversely treated much more harshly than a criminal defendant to make a point”? He spent last night getting all mad online, calling on Democrats to “denounce” Biden’s abuse of his pardon power. [Embedded links are available at the main link]
And this was a smaaaaaall sampling. We could have picked out any three shithead commentators at random and found enough pearl-clutching that Louis XVI’s court at Versailles might have said, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, take it down a notch, you’re embarrassing yourselves.”
There seem to be a couple of different angles of attack that have left the defenders of America’s no-longer-actually-existing-but-what-we-are-pretending-is-that-they-are norms sputtering and hitching like a ’73 Pinto that someone accidentally filled with diesel.
One is the charge that Biden lied. He swore for years that he would not pardon his son, but would instead let the legal system take its course. Now he’s gone back on his word.
Which, are you fucking kidding with this? A politician reneging on a promise? Next you’ll tell us the NFL ignores all the brain damage football gives its players.
The other angle is pretending that the investigations of Hunter were somehow pure and not politically motivated to begin with. Which is simply ridiculous. [Yes. I’ve seen a lot of that.]
[…] Here, to cite one example, is Chait pretending to be a political naif, in a post hyperbolically titled “Biden’s Unpardonable Hypocrisy.” […] what the fuck:
The most bewildering passage in Biden’s pardon statement posits some amorphous conspiracy against him by Justice Department prosecutors: “There has been an effort to break Hunter —who has been five and a half years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution. In trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me—and there’s no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough.”
Trying to break Hunter? And his father? To what end?
There is no end! Republicans just wanted to persecute a political opponent! They wanted to make him drop hundreds of thousands of dollars on defense lawyers. They wanted to cause Biden, who is famously deeply devoted to his children, a ton of heartache. They wanted all of this persecution to distract him from pursuing and enacting his legislative agenda. They wanted to drive down his administration’s favorability numbers to damage his re-election effort and those of his fellow Democrats in Congress.
[…] damaging Biden’s re-election effort by pursuing his son may have even worked. There has been speculation that while the cognitive decline evident in the president’s infamous debate performance last June had many causes, the stress of having just watched his son convicted at trial was likely a big one. And that trial occurred after Republicans had raised enough political sturm und drang to get the Justice Department to walk away from the plea deal Hunter’s lawyers had negotiated. […]
The other angle that appears to upset people is the alleged damage to the aforementioned norms. Here’s Chait, again, speaking for so many of the pearl-clutchers:
It would be tempting, but unfair, to draw a simple equation between Joe Biden’s situational ethics and that of his successor. A willingness to evade the rule of law is the foundation of Donald Trump’s entire career in business and politics, not a nepotistic exception. Still, principles become much harder to defend when their most famous defenders have compromised them flagrantly.
Biden defended these norms for four years. He stayed out of the investigations of his kid. He stayed out of the much larger and more consequential investigations of his predecessor, much to the chagrin of Democrats who wanted him to fire Attorney General Merrick Garland and replace him with someone who seemed interested in prosecuting Trump’s many felonies.
And what did Biden get for all his trouble? His defense of these norms allowed Trump to get away with everything and return to office, where he is trying to appoint blatant loyalists who have promised to pursue vengeance in his name. Because, despite what some people still like to think, there are no principles here, only power to be exercised in however the holder of that power sees fit.
[…] There are no norms anymore! There are no guardrails! There is only power, and the will to use it.
Which Biden did, after sitting on it for years. He foreclosed one avenue for Trump World to spitefully abuse the justice system to seek revenge against Trump’s perceived enemies. He told anyone bothering to listen that Democrats do not need to tolerate a double standard where Republicans do whatever they want without consequences while Democrats accept politically motivated prosecutions out of some misguided self-image as democracy’s last defenders. That’s just silly. It’s fighting not just with one hand tied behind their backs, but with lopping all the fingers off the other hand in some weird effort to look fair.
Or, to put it more simply, Biden stood up to the abuse of the justice system by dropping a giant “fuck you” on some of its egregious abusers.
Frankly, we think there are a lot more abuses we’d like to see him correct […]
[…] Back in 2018, Patel authored the Nunes Memo that proved Barack Obama weaponized the FBI to murder Ginger Donya’s campaign. LOL, [actually] it showed that the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation actually didn’t start because of the DODGY STEELE DOSSIER, as wingnuts still have themselves convinced it did, but rather that Trump campaign worker idiot George Papadopoulos drunk-rubbed himself all over an Australian diplomat and eagerly bragged to him about the conspiracies Russia was doing for Trump, which led to a little ringy-dingy to the FBI by our ally, etc.
But never mind, [Trump] has always been pleased with K$H’s extreme asskissery efforts, and somehow he got promoted to a position staffing the National Security Council. He became the unofficial “Ukraine director” — unofficial by which we mean not at all, but for some fucking reason Donald Trump managed to become convinced he was the Ukraine director — bypassing the actual Ukraine expert on Fiona Hill’s staff to allegedly make a back channel to give [Trump] Ukraine documents to prove the REAL election interference in 2016 was done by Ukraine, and not Russia. (It was not.)
As our Liz put it:What our Kash lacked in actual knowledge, though, he made up for in the only currency that really matters in the current White House — the ability to tell Donald Trump what he wants to hear. And what Donald Trump wanted to hear was that, if he leaned on Ukraine hard enough, they would give up the goods on Joe Biden and damage the Democratic frontrunner for 2020. Call logs show that Patel was in contact with Rudy Giuliani in May, when he was traveling back and forth to Ukraine trying to gin up the Biden smear. And both Fiona Hill and Alexander Vindman testified that people in the West Wing were under the impression that Patel was the resident Ukraine expert. Which is allegedly how he got promoted again to a counterterrorism desk […]
Or as Patel himself put it in his book Government Gangsters:
I regularly used to tell people that the fastest way to move up in the government is to just screw up, and the bigger the screwup, the bigger the promotion. Every person implicated in your mistakes has an interest in covering up what they did, so they will promote you. That means the people at the very top are usually the most immoral, unethical people in the entire agency.
[OMG, Patel said a true thing! And he nicely summarized his tactics for rising to the top of the scum heap.]
Worked like a charm! And like his mentor-daddies Devin Nunes and Big T, Patel is muy litigious. He’s sued Politico reporter Natasha Bertrand, the New York Times and reporter Adam Goldman, CNN and five of their reporters, and the anti-disinformation activist Jim Stewartson, for saying things he didn’t like. He has yet to win any of those lawsuits, but that ain’t the point.
In November 2020, [Trump] named Patel chief of staff to (acting) Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller, after Secretary of Defense Mark Esper got You’re fired! for refusing to make the military shoot George Floyd protestors in the kneecaps. Treasonballs wanted to make Patel deputy FBI director then, but Attorney General William Barr told him “over my dead body.”
Naturally Patel’s got some side income, shilling a $90 COVID vaccine detox supplement on Trump’s Truth Social. [image of advertisement is available at the link]
[…] Other Patel greatest hits: claiming to Breitbart News that The Big Man could declassify documents with his mind, being a member of the board of directors for the Trump Media & Technology Group, and collecting donations online to help “peaceful” January 6 defendants “stand up against the Deep State,” though it’s unclear if anybody but K$H ever actually got that money.
Should he be confirmed as FBI director, Patel’s got a plan to “shut down the FBI Hoover Building on day one and reopen it the next day as a museum of the deep state.” Oh, and he wants to change the law to make it easier to sue journalists, […] “We will go out and find the conspirators not just in government, but in the media.”
On Trump nominating Kushner pere to be ambassador to France… Seems to me that the French might have a say in who they’ll accept as ambassador from the US, so it’s not just the Senate that has to fall in line.
birgerjohanssonsays
Scott Manly:
“China Launches New Falcon 9 Clone While SpaceX Flies Next Starship – Deep space update December 1st”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=tGdQoSyYzQQ
Lots of items, including cool suborbital stuff
It’s still snowing in the Great Lakes after more than 5 feet fell over the holiday weekend and snarled travel, stranded motorists and buried homes. A short-lived break is coming before several inches of more snow and a blast of bone-chilling air arrive.
But first, an additional 1 foot of snow is possible through Tuesday in some of the same areas of the Great Lakes already blasted over the weekend as the current lake-effect snow event continues.
Lake-effect snow when cold air passes over relatively warmer lakes and happens as a series of narrow, but intense periods of snow — known as snow bands — that stream off of the lake and into an area close to it downwind. Snow totals can pile up when these snow bands train, or remain more stationary, over a particular area…
Parts of far northwestern Pennsylvania and southwestern New York could pick up nearly 20 additional inches of snow through Tuesday. The most intense bouts of lake-effect snow will come to an end Tuesday, but some areas will only have about 24 hours or less to dig out before a storm sweeps through the region…
Lake-effect snow will start up again Thursday in the wake of the storm as another punch of frigid, January-like air engulfs the eastern US late this week…
Black-footed ferrets have been reintroduced to the Arizona landscape for the first time in almost 30 years, according to the Arizona Game and Fish Department.
In collaboration with the United States Fish and Wildlife Service’s national conservation program for ferrets, 10 of the small critters were released in the Aubrey Valley area, about an hour west of Flagstaff, according to Game and Fish in a news release.
The ferrets were reintroduced only after scientists were able to combat the sylvatic plague, described by Game and Fish as one of the biggest threats to black-footed ferrets…
New regulations for pet passports affecting dogs, cats, and ferrets traveling from Great Britain to Northern Ireland have sparked strong criticism in Westminster.
The introduction of pet passport requirements for dogs, cats, and ferrets traveling between different parts of the UK has been labeled an “outrage” in Westminster. The criticism emerged during a debate in the House of Lords, where members discussed new regulations that would mandate pet owners in Great Britain to obtain proper documentation when traveling to Northern Ireland.
Critics argue that the new pet passport requirement underscores Northern Ireland’s continued adherence to EU regulations after Brexit, creating a sense of disparity with the rest of the UK—a point of significant frustration for the unionist community. The necessary documentation, which will be free to obtain, includes a statement from the pet owner confirming that they do not intend to travel to Ireland or any other EU nation with their pet or assistance dog…
North Carolina Senate Republicans on Monday voted to override Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s recent veto of a Republican-passed bill designed to strip away power from the newly-elected Democratic governor and attorney general. The override vote passed 30-19.
Republican lawmakers have been trying to fast track SB 382 while they still hold a veto-proof supermajority until the end of the month. Cooper and other Democrats in the state have roundly condemned the legislation, which was disguised as a hurricane relief bill. Cooper described the 11th hour power grab as a “sham” and as Republicans in the state blatantly “playing politics.”
Not only will the legislation strip power from newly-elected Democratic Gov. Josh Stein and incoming Democratic Attorney General Jeff Jackson, it also will drastically transform core election responsibilities throughout the state, and make election administration more difficult. The measure, if implemented, will shorten the timeframe for county boards of elections to tabulate provisional ballots and absentee ballots, as well as compress the timeframe for curing ballots, to name just a few of the changes it will impose on election administration.
Most notably, the bill also gives the newly-elected Republican state auditor control over the state’s five-person election board. This is a role historically held by the governor.
“This legislation was titled disaster relief but instead violates the constitution by taking appointments from the next Governor for the Board of Elections, Utilities Commission and Commander of the NC Highway Patrol, letting political parties choose appellate judges and interfering with the Attorney General’s ability to advocate for lower electric bills for consumers,” Cooper said in a statement last week, after he vetoed the measure, as expected.
The House’s override vote will take place later this month. If the House votes to override Cooper’s veto, the bill will become effective immediately. It’s worth noting, however, that three House Republicans did vote “no” on SB 382 when it passed the state House earlier this month.
“The only hope is that they don’t have the votes in the House to override. Three Republican representatives from western NC voted against the bill — they can’t override without their votes. If they do override, then it becomes law and we will see what, if any, challenges arise in the courts,” Liz Barber, policy director of the North Carolina ACLU, told TPM.
All kinds of potential bad news here. There are a lot of close calls when it comes to legislation at the state level. Voting all the way down the ballot is important.
Right-wing pundit and author Dinesh D’Souza has now admitted that the central premise of his election conspiracy film and accompanying book, “2,000 Mules,” is false. [About damned time.]
In the 2022 film, D’Souza cited the right-wing activist group True the Vote to claim cell phone geolocation data proved that volunteers for nonprofits were stuffing ballot boxes with votes in favor of President Joe Biden, helping him to defeat Donald Trump in the 2020 election.
“We recently learned that surveillance videos used in the film may not have actually been correlated with the geolocation data,” said a statement quietly posted to D’Souza’s website on Monday.
“I now understand that the surveillance videos used in the film were characterized on the basis of inaccurate information provided to me and my team. If I had known then that the videos were not linked to geolocation data, I would have clarified this and produced and edited the film differently,” he added. [WTF!? Does D’Souza not have an inclination to look at the unreliable source and at the data and figure out for himself that it is hogwash?]
D’Souza’s note apologized to Mark Andrews, a Georgia man recorded on video footage that was used in the movie with his face blurred. In the original version of the film, D’Souza narrated the scene with Andrews and said, “What you are seeing is a crime. These are fraudulent votes.”
Despite D’Souza’s attempt to lay all the blame at the feet of True the Vote, this claim was the central premise of his movie and accompanying book. [D’Souza took no personal responsibility.]
Salem Media Group, which published the book and distributed the film version, previously apologized to Andrews and said the company would no longer distribute the book or film.
Georgia law enforcement agencies previously debunked the film’s allegations but the right-wing provocateurs—led by prominent figures like Trump—have touted the allegations and similar conspiracies for years. [Kash Patel is still pushing that nonsense.]
D’Souza […] has written and directed eight movies since 2012 attacking Democrats and liberals. […]
There was a gap in D’Souza’s filmmaking because in 2014 he pleaded guilty to federal charges of making illegal contributions to the Senate campaign for Wendy Long, the Republican nominee in New York’s 2012 Senate race. […]
D’Souza was later pardoned by Trump in 2018, reflecting Trump’s habit of delivering politically for figures who have lavished him with praise—similar to the FBI director nomination he recently offered to Trump fanfic writer Kash Patel.
The D’Souza saga is a microcosm of the right-wing media world and conservative culture in general, where utterly false and easily debunked claims are promoted for years on end, only to quietly be cast off when people are no longer paying attention.
This week, God Awful Movies has guests Reno and Cecilia from “The Comic Dissection” podcast . BTW Reno and Cecilia dissects comics from an intersectional leftist perspective (give them a try, they are on all social media).
This episode of GAM should be generally available in another day.
‘Bibleman’ of this short film is a Xian ‘superhero’ that kills people if they are …too depressed?! The logic is weird.
Also, lightsabres are a copyright violation!
Minnesota Republicans filed a lawsuit Monday to try to force a rerun of a state House race where the incumbent Democrat won by 14 votes — but in which investigators concluded that election workers probably destroyed 20 valid absentee ballots after failing to count them.
It’s a race that could determine the balance of power in the Minnesota House, where leaders from both parties are working out the details of a power-sharing agreement that currently presumes a 67-67 tie when the Legislature convenes next month. A Republican victory in a special election could shift that balance to a two-vote, 68-66 GOP majority.
Democrats have a one-vote majority in the state Senate. So regardless of the outcome in the disputed race, Minnesota will be returning to some degree of divided government in 2025 after two years of full Democratic control.
“The actions of Scott County elections officials constitute a serious breach of not only Minnesota Election Law, but the public trust in our electoral system,” the lawsuit said.
Democratic Rep. Brad Tabke was declared the winner last week of the swing suburban Shakopee-area District 54A race by 14 votes after a recount and the official canvass. But Scott County election officials had said earlier, after a post-election audit, that they were unable to account for 21 absentee ballots in the district southwest of Minneapolis.
County Attorney Ronald Hocevar reported last Wednesday that his preliminary investigation determined that election workers most likely threw at least 20 of those absentee ballots away, and that they may have been in a paper bale that a recycler had already sent away for shredding. He wrote that they “most likely will not be recovered,” and that even if they were found, it’s unlikely that an unbroken chain of custody could be proven to assure that they weren’t tampered with…
“Brother From Another Planet” at least seems watchable. As for the first Polish film… I suppose if you are the only two men left alive in a world populated by women, even Beavis and Butt-Head might get to score.
A Delaware judge today rejected Elon Musk’s bid to reinstate a Tesla pay package that was worth over $50 billion at the beginning of 2024 and has now crossed $100 billion based on Tesla’s latest share price. The judge also ordered Tesla to pay $345 million in attorneys’ fees to the plaintiff’s counsel, who had sought $5.6 billion in fees.
Delaware Court of Chancery Judge Kathaleen McCormick, who voided the pay plan in January, said today that a June 2024 shareholder vote re-approving the 2018 pay plan is not a compelling reason to reverse the original ruling. Her ruling said that a “large and talented group of defense firms got creative with the ratification argument, but their unprecedented theories go against multiple strains of settled law.”
Musk is thus prevented from accessing a pay package whose potential value has soared along with Tesla’s stock price. “As of Monday, the pay package was worth $101.4 billion, according to Equilar, a compensation consulting firm,” Reuters wrote.
By holding another shareholder vote, Musk and Tesla board members essentially created new evidence after the trial, McCormick wrote:
There are at least four fatal flaws…
Reginald Selkirksays
@29 birgerjohansson
“The Most Bizarre 80s Sci-Fi Films You’ve Never Heard Of”
Actually, I have heard of, and seen three of them!
“Brother From Another Planet” at least seems watchable.
It is. I watched it. Long ago, so I don’t remember a lot of detail, but my impression is favorable. It’s definitely woke. The IMDb rating of 6.7/10 is quite good.
I also watched Hardware Wars. It is funny, made on a budget of $8000, and is only 13 minutes long. IMDb 6.9/10.
Those two are available on tubitv.com (free with ads).
I also saw Liquid Sky when it first came out. I do not have a wish to see it again.
After the recent revelation that Pete Hegseth had secretly paid a financial settlement to a woman who had accused him of raping her in 2017, President-elect Donald Trump stood by his choice of Hegseth to become the next Secretary of Defense. Trump’s communications director, Steven Cheung, issued a statement noting that Hegseth, who has denied wrongdoing, has not been charged with any crime. “President Trump is nominating high-caliber and extremely qualified candidates to serve in his administration,” Cheung maintained.
But Hegseth’s record before becoming a full-time Fox News TV host, in 2017, raises additional questions about his suitability to run the world’s largest and most lethal military force. A trail of documents, corroborated by the accounts of former colleagues, indicates that Hegseth was forced to step down by both of the two nonprofit advocacy groups that he ran—Veterans for Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America—in the face of serious allegations of financial mismanagement, sexual impropriety, and personal misconduct.
A previously undisclosed whistle-blower report on Hegseth’s tenure as the president of Concerned Veterans for America, from 2013 until 2016, describes him as being repeatedly intoxicated while acting in his official capacity—to the point of needing to be carried out of the organization’s events. The detailed seven-page report—which was compiled by multiple former C.V.A. employees and sent to the organization’s senior management in February, 2015—states that, at one point, Hegseth had to be restrained while drunk from joining the dancers on the stage of a Louisiana strip club, where he had brought his team. The report also says that Hegseth, who was married at the time, and other members of his management team sexually pursued the organization’s female staffers, whom they divided into two groups—the “party girls” and the “not party girls.” In addition, the report asserts that, under Hegseth’s leadership, the organization became a hostile workplace that ignored serious accusations of impropriety, including an allegation made by a female employee that another employee on Hegseth’s staff had attempted to sexually assault her at the Louisiana strip club. In a separate letter of complaint, which was sent to the organization in late 2015, a different former employee described Hegseth being at a bar in the early-morning hours of May 29, 2015, while on an official tour through Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, drunkenly chanting “Kill All Muslims! Kill All Muslims!”
[…] I spoke at length with two people who identified themselves as having contributed to the whistle-blower report. One of them said of Hegseth, “I’ve seen him drunk so many times. I’ve seen him dragged away not a few times but multiple times. To have him at the Pentagon would be scary,” adding, “When those of us who worked at C.V.A. heard he was being considered for SecDef, it wasn’t ‘No,’ it was ‘Hell No!’ ” According to the complaint, at one such C.V.A. event in Virginia Beach, on Memorial Day weekend in 2014, Hegseth was “totally sloshed” and needed to be carried to his room because “he was so intoxicated.” The following month, during an event in Cleveland, Hegseth, who had gone with his team to a bar around the corner from their hotel, was described as “completely drunk in a public place.” […]
In October, 2014, C.V.A. instituted a “no alcohol” policy at its events. But the next month, according to the report, Hegseth and another manager lifted the policy while overseeing a get-out-the-vote field operation to boost Republican candidates in North Carolina. According to the report, on the evening before the election, Hegseth, who had been out with three young female staff members, was so inebriated by 1 a.m. that a staffer who had driven him to his hotel, in a van full of other drunken staffers, asked for assistance to get Hegseth to his room. “Pete was completely passed out in the middle seat, slumped over” a young female staff member, the report says. It took two male staff members to get Hegseth into the hotel […]
According to the report, a volunteer for the organization during this period was so concerned about the rampant promiscuity and sexism that she sent an e-mail to C.V.A.’s headquarters complaining about a lack of professionalism, an unhealthy workplace, and an atmosphere in which women were unfairly treated. […]
In late November, 2014, Hegseth and his team deployed to Louisiana for a U.S. Senate runoff. This is when, according to the whistle-blower complaint, Hegseth took the C.V.A. team to the strip club, where “he was so drunk he tried to get on the stage and dance with the strippers.” […] Meanwhile, the female staffer who had to restrain Hegseth at the strip club alleged that a different male staff member had attempted to sexually assault her there, according to the report. A C.V.A. manager, however, was described as dismissive, for arguing that her attacker had been drunk and therefore shouldn’t be held responsible. […]
under Hegseth’s leadership, V.F.F. [Vets For Freedom] soon ran up enormous debt, and financial records indicate that, by the end of 2008, it was unable to pay its creditors. The group’s primary donors became concerned that their money was being wasted on inappropriate expenses; there were rumors of parties that “could politely be called trysts,” as the former associate of the group put it. The early sympathizer said, “I was not the first to hear that there was money sloshing around and sexually inappropriate behavior in the workplace.”
[…] the finances of V.F.F. grew so dire that the group’s donors hatched a plan to take control away from Hegseth. The donors’ representatives hired a forensic accountant to review the books. The findings were appalling. In January, 2009, Hegseth sent a letter to the donors admitting that, as of that day, the group had less than a thousand dollars in the bank and $434,833 in unpaid bills. The group also had run up credit-card debts of as much as seventy-five thousand dollars. Hegseth said that he took full responsibility for the mess, but added that, unless the donors gave him more funds, V.F.F. would have to file for bankruptcy and close down.
[…] Margaret Hoover, a Republican political commentator and political strategist who worked as an adviser to V.F.F. between 2008 and 2010, recently told CNN that she had grave concerns about Hegseth’s ability to run the Pentagon, the largest department in the federal government, given his mismanagement at V.F.F. “I watched him run an organization very poorly, lose the confidence of donors. The organization ultimately folded and was forced to merge with another organization who individuals felt could run and manage funds on behalf of donors more responsibly than he could. That was my experience with him.” Hoover stressed that V.F.F. was an exceedingly small organization, with fewer than ten employees, and a budget of between five million and ten million dollars. She told CNN, “And he couldn’t do that properly—I don’t know how he’s going to run an organization with an eight-hundred-and-fifty-seven-billion-dollar budget and three million individuals.”
[…] In 2014, Hegseth joined Fox News, as a contributor.
[…] In 2010, he had married a second time, to Samantha Deering, a co-worker at Vets for Freedom. He admitted in an essay that year that he had fathered a child “out of wedlock” before marrying her, the Times reported. Then, in August, 2017, while still married to Deering, he fathered a daughter with another woman, a producer at Fox, Jennifer Rauchet, whom he eventually married, in 2019. As he and Deering wrangled their way through a difficult divorce, as the Times first reported, his mother, Penelope Hegseth, sent him an e-mail excoriating him as “an abuser of women” who “belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around, and uses women for his own power and ego.” She admonished him, “Get some help and take an honest look at yourself.” (A Trump spokesman denounced the newspaper’s publication of the e-mail as “despicable” and noted that Hegseth’s mother had apologized to him for writing it.)
[Details of a sexual assault that Hegseth denies are presented in the article. Hegseth paid off his accuser. No charges were file.]
[…] “Trump thinks he looks and sounds good on TV.” Hegseth has also been a strident opponent of gender equality in the military, proclaiming women unfit for combat, and calling the claim that diversity is a strength “garbage.”
[…] A few days ago, I filed a public-records request with the Monterey County District Attorney’s office, asking for any information supporting the claim made by Hegseth’s lawyer that his accuser had levied sexual-assault claims against others. The answer came back promptly and definitively. The claim is spurious. The office had no such evidence.
During an interview on The Rachel Maddow Show, Jane Mayer said that her phone is ringing off the hook since this report on Pete Hegseth went public. People are calling Mayer to corroborate the stories about Hegseth.
Rachel Maddow presented an excellent and thorough segment discussing the fact that President Biden pardoned his son, Hunter. YouTube link. The YouTube video is a truncated version that does not show some history that Maddow presented.
birgerjohanssonsays
(Knowledge Fight Animated)
Formulaic Animations 1: How dumb people [Alex Jones] hide money
Are Trump voters morally responsible for the harms that will follow from his policies?
The foreseeable ones, yes. Which means everything easily inferred from his pre-election-day rhetoric, his past actions, and the many warnings given by many experts about the threats he pose. If he harms trans people, tanks the economy, costs Ukraine its freedom, appoints another rapist to the Supreme Court, lavishes more tax cuts on the rich, botches the response to another pandemic, puts more kids in more cages, blows up NATO and unleashes Putin on an unsuspecting EU, ends democracy, or tweets nonsense like “covfefe” again, in particular, then every single person who voted for him this November shares culpability in the crime.
birgerjohanssonsays
The actor Timothy West passed away November 12th.
He was married to Prunella Scales (Fawlty Towers) who turned 92 years today.
It is a quite sad occasion since Prunella Scales is in poor health.
birgerjohanssonsays
Jon Stewart:
“Trump Nominates Kash Patel for Head of FBI & Hunter Biden’s Last Minute Pardon.”
Winter ruminations from the town where CRISPR was co-discovered.
…At 10.50 the sun finally rose above the roof of the rather low three-storey buildings 300 m away, shining a light that somehow seems anemic. December in North Sweden is not like Minnesota.
I feel like the robot in Hitch-Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy.
Silver lining; As long as the Gulf Stream is doing its job, we get warmer winters than the northern US states.
birgerjohanssonsays
Stephen Colbert:
“Pres. Biden Should Pardon Everybody | Trump Picks Kash Patel To Run FBI / Hegseth’s Drunk History.”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=zd3pNQ5V3vo
In the wake of high-profile hacks affecting hundreds of millions of Americans, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is proposing a rule limiting data brokers’ ability to sell Americans’ sensitive personal and financial information.
Under the proposed rule, data brokers that sell information about consumers’ income, credit history, credit score, or debt payments would be considered consumer reporting agencies. As such, they’d be required to comply with the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), a law limiting how these agencies can obtain and use the information provided in consumer reports. In other words, they’d be treated like credit bureaus and background check companies, which already have to comply with the FCRA…
During the Monday press call, a CFPB spokesperson declined to comment on “what a future administration may do” but pointed to “broad bipartisan recognition that data brokers pose real dangers both to Americans’ privacy and to national security.” But some government agencies, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the FBI also rely on data brokers to get around surveillance restrictions.
It seems more likely to me that the CFPB will cease to exist than accomplish new consumer protection regulation.
Reginald Selkirksays
Scientists Uncover ‘Game-Changing’ Therapy for Asthma Attacks
People living with asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease may soon have a new treatment for their symptoms. A recent major clinical trial has shown that an antibody drug can prevent and reduce certain kinds of asthma and COPD flare-ups—even outperforming the only standard medication currently available.
Scientists in the UK, Australia, and Sweden conducted the double-blinded, controlled, and randomized phase II trial, which aimed to test the potential of benralizumab in treating a particular type of asthma or COPD attack. People at high risk of these attacks were randomized to receive steroids, the typical frontline treatment, or a single injectable dose of benralizumab (either alone or with steroids). The researchers found that people who took benralizumab were significantly less likely to need further treatment or to end up in a hospital. The findings could pave the way for the already approved benralizumab to become the first new drug to treat these potentially life-threatening attacks in 50 years, the researchers say.
Benralizumab is a lab-made antibody developed by the company AstraZeneca that is designed to target and reduce specific white blood cells known as eosinophils. While these cells normally help fend off bacterial and parasitic infections, they often play a role in causing allergy and asthma symptoms as well. Some people’s asthma, COPD, or other respiratory illnesses are also primarily instigated by high levels of eosinophils in the body. In 2017, the Food and Drug Administration approved benralizumab as an add-on treatment for people with severe eosinophilic asthma. But researchers have started to study whether the drug could also be used to treat more kinds of asthma or COPD instigated by eosinophils…
StevoRsays
@ ^ Reginald Selkirk : And we’ve only just found that out NOW?!
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol declared an “emergency martial law,” Tuesday accusing the country’s opposition of controlling the parliament, sympathizing with North Korea and paralyzing the government with anti-state activities.
Yoon made the announcement in a televised briefing Tuesday, vowing to “eradicate pro-North Korean forces and protect the constitutional democratic order.”
It wasn’t immediately clear how Yoon’s step would affect the country’s governance and democracy. The move drew immediate opposition from politicians, including the leader of his own conservative party, Han Dong-hoon, who called the decision “wrong” and vowed to “stop it with the people.” Opposition leader Lee Jae-myung, who narrowly lost to Yoon in the 2022 presidential election, called Yoon’s announcement “illegal and unconstitutional.” …
Huh. Well that wasn’t where I was expecting it. Something about a multi-sided pyramid.. As seen from the air which, apparently, is new?
Reginald Selkirksays
@42 StevoR
@ ^ Reginald Selkirk : And we’ve only just found that out NOW?!
“Finding out” takes a while. First you may have promising lab results. Then you have to figure out how to turn your new knowledge into an actual medicine. Then you have Phase I clinical trials. This was a Phase II clinical trial. If successful. there is also a Phase III.
StevoRsays
^ For working out how a pyramid looks? From the air?
Egypt has many pyramids. I have seen some commentary that the 8-sided thing is not the Great Pyramid of Giza, but I haven’t tracked down definitive information.
As the public digests the obscene absurdity of Donald Trump tapping Kash Patel to lead the FBI, the future nominee’s career is coming into sharper focus. The New York Times noted, for example, that Patel has “parlayed his association with the former president into enterprises he promotes under the logo ‘K$H.’”
The result has been a curious enterprise in which Patel sells Trump-related clothing and children’s books that celebrate “King Donald.” The Washington Post had a related report, featuring an even more unsettling product: “Patel has been a pitchman for a variety of products marketed to Trump supporters. One dietary supplement he’s promoted claims to be a COVID vaccine ‘detoxification system.’”
And what, pray tell is, a vaccine “detoxification system”? A Rolling Stone report added:
Most alarmingly, Patel has used his Truth Social account to tout the efficacy of “vaccine reversal” treatments sold by a company whose co-founders previously ran a multi-level marketing business, Xcellent Choice, which was flagged by the watchdog Truth in Advertising. Warrior Essentials, the company behind the trademarked vaccine “detox” pills, claims that one of its products eliminates the spike protein from a Covid-19 vaccine, as well as “zombie cells” and “misfolded DNA.”
In other words, the president-elect’s choice to lead the Federal Bureau of Investigation has touted pills that, according to its manufacturer, “reverse” Covid vaccines. These magical pills, consumers have been told to believe, will undo vaccines that you’ve already received.
For the record, there are no pills that can undo vaccines — even if those pills are promoted by a man who might soon lead the FBI.
What’s more, Patel isn’t alone. I’m reminded of this Washington Post report from 10 years ago about researchers retracting a “bogus study that was used by a company to validate weight-loss claims for green coffee bean pills.”
The study, which was conducted in India but written by researchers from the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania, initially claimed that people who used the supplement lost 16 percent of their body fat (about 18 pounds each) with or without diet and exercise. Now, the paper has been taken down from an open-access scientific journal’s Web site with this message: “The sponsors of the study cannot assure the validity of the data so we, Joe Vinson and Bryan Burnham, are retracting the paper.”
Why is this relevant anew? Because the green coffee bean pills were endorsed by syndicated television personality Dr. Mehmet Oz — whom Trump now wants to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
“You may think magic is make believe, but this little bean has scientists saying they found a magic weight loss cure for every body type,” Oz told viewers. “This miracle pill can burn fat fast for anyone who wants to lose weight. This is very exciting and it’s breaking news.”
The pill, we now know, was neither “magic” nor a “miracle.”
Around the same time, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee starred in informercials touting “amazing” dietary supplements that he claimed could “reverse” Type 2 diabetes. (In the same infomercial, Huckabee also suggested diabetes patients shouldn’t trust the advice of medical professionals.)
When Mike Huckabee ran for president in 2016, CBS News’ Bob Schieffer asked him about the infomercials and the dubious advice he gave to the public. Huckabee responded, “You know, I don’t have to defend everything that I have ever done.”
Eight years later, Trump tapped Huckabee to serve as the U.S. ambassador to Israel.
When looking for common denominators tying together the president-elect’s personnel choices for his second term, let’s not overlook the Republicans with backgrounds in snake-oil sales — and their apparent willingness to rip off American consumers.
A short time ago, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law, claiming it was necessary to root out North Korean sympathizers in the the South. So far it hasn’t gone like your standard presidential coup. Unsurprisingly, the leader of the opposition denounced the move. But then so too did the head of Yoon’s own political party. Yoon is a Trump-like figure and he’s been mired in declining popularity, a series of scandals and budget stand-offs with the opposition. In other words, the “threat” seems more Yoon’s plummeting public support than any communist infiltration in the South. Militaries of course operate by their own logic. But absent a threat that military leaders find compelling — communism during the Cold War — they generally won’t join up with a President who is already flailing.
A short while ago, the military announced a suspension of parliamentary activity. So Yoon appears to have at least some military support. But man-on-the-street interviews from Seoul suggest the civilian population is less supportive or terrorized than bewildered by what the President thinks he’s doing. The head of the opposition has called on members of parliament to converge on the parliament to oppose the effort.
I’m not a Korea expert by any means. But this at least doesn’t have the look of the kind of effort that’s going to stick. But the backdrop of this effort has obvious international echoes and repercussions. During the Cold War, South Korea oscillated autocracy, liberal democracy and dictatorship. But it’s had a thriving and boisterous democracy since the late 1980s. It’s hard not to see this decision as part of the autocratic tide sweeping the world and perhaps Donald Trump’s return to power in the U.S. It’s difficult to imagine something like this being attempted 10 or 20 years ago. But now, who knows? How this plays out will be seen as signal for what’s possible and acceptable in the global order today.
“Union leaders were overjoyed with the ruling, which affects tens of thousands of public employees.”
Wisconsin public worker and teachers unions scored a major legal victory Monday with a ruling that restores collective bargaining rights they lost under a 2011 state law that sparked weeks of protests and made the state the center of the national battle over union rights.
That law, known as Act 10, effectively ended the ability of most public employees to bargain for wage increases and other issues, and forced them to pay more for health insurance and retirement benefits.
Under the ruling by Dane County Circuit Judge Jacob Frost, all public sector workers who lost their collective bargaining power would have it restored to what was in place prior to 2011. They would be treated the same as the police, firefighter and other public safety unions that were exempted under the law.
Republicans vowed to immediately appeal the ruling, which ultimately is likely to go before the Wisconsin Supreme Court. That only amplifies the importance of the April election that will determine whether the court remains controlled 4-3 by liberal justices. [!!!]
[…] The law was proposed by Walker and enacted by the Republican-controlled Legislature in spite of massive protests that went on for weeks and drew as many as 100,000 people to the Capitol. The law has withstood numerous legal challenges over the years, but this was the first brought since the Wisconsin Supreme Court flipped to liberal control in 2023.
The seven unions and three union leaders that brought the lawsuit argued that the law should be struck down because it creates unconstitutional exemptions for firefighters and other public safety workers. Attorneys for the Legislature and state agencies countered that the exemptions are legal, have already been upheld by other courts, and that the case should be dismissed.
But Frost sided with the unions in July, saying the law violates equal protection guarantees in the Wisconsin Constitution by dividing public employees into “general” and “public safety” employees. He ruled that general employee unions, like those representing teachers, can not be treated differently from public safety unions that were exempt from the law.
His ruling Monday delineated the dozens of specific provisions in the law that must be struck. […]
The Act 10 law effectively ended collective bargaining for most public unions by allowing them to bargain solely over base wage increases no greater than inflation. It also disallowed the automatic withdrawal of union dues, required annual recertification votes for unions, and forced public workers to pay more for health insurance and retirement benefits. […]
More details at the link, including money-based claims by Republicans, pointing out that schools and local governments used the law to raise money through higher employee contributions for benefits.
[…] Hours upon hours devoted by CNN to “Hunter Biden’s [tiny offense] Pardon.” Front page, top of the list, NY Times. Can’t avoid it.
How much time did they devote to the the pardons of Paul Manafort? Roger Stone? Michael Flynn? Joe Arpaio or all of the myriad pardons granted by the Trump administration? Did those stories garner wall-to-wall day-long coverage? Yes, they studiously “mentioned” a precious few of those pardons, but they sure as hell didn’t devote their entire front page and their wall-to wall televised coverage to them.
[…] This is a Trumpified media establishment. They are Trump’s dogs. They’ve been conditioned.
At one point, the New York Times displayed on it’s front page four articles about the Hunter Biden pardon. Reminds one of the coverage of Hillary Clinton’s emails.
According to the Swedish paper Expressen (machine translated), two fiber optic cables operated by Global Connect between Sweden and Finland were damaged Monday morning. The Swedish Post and Telecom Authority (PTS) said that the cable breaks occurred on land in Finland. The damage affected about a hundred businesses and six thousand homes.
Swedish authorities initially suspected foul play, with the Minister of Civil Defense saying sabotage was suspected. However, Finnish police denied this, saying there was no ongoing criminal investigation regarding the cable break.
Telecom operator Elisa later announced that one of the cables was accidentally by an excavator at a construction site, with Global Connect confirming it. However, the other damaged cable is still being investigated at the time of writing, and we don’t have any news yet on what caused its disruption…
Just past 1 a.m. local time in Seoul, after lawmakers unanimously voted to block the president’s martial law decree, dozens of troops that had entered the main parliamentary building began to withdraw, according to Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo.
Under South Korean law the president is obligated to end martial law when parliament voted to block it. The president has not done that but the military has withdrawn from the parliament building. This is bad for the president, who will probably lose in the long run if he can’t shut down parliament.
On December 3, 1992, the first SMS text message in history is sent: Neil Papworth, a 22-year-old engineer, uses a personal computer to send the text message “Merry Christmas” via the Vodafone network to the phone of a colleague.
Papworth, while working for the now-defunct Anglo-French IT services company Sema Group Telecoms, was part of a team developing a “Short Message Service Centre” (SMSC) for the British telecommunications company Vodafone UK. At the time, Sema Group hoped to use these short messages as a paging service. After Papworth installed the system at a site west of London, he sat at a computer terminal and sent the simple message to the mobile phone of Richard Jarvis, director of Vodafone, who was attending a holiday party…
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was called out by his Democratic colleague after the Kentucky senator complained about playing “political games” with judicial nominations. McConnell made the remark during a Senate floor session on Monday and said he was concerned that two U.S. circuit court judges who had plans to retire may not follow through with them in the wake of President-elect Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 U.S. election.
“This sort of partisan behavior undermines the integrity of the judiciary,” McConnell said. “Never, never before has a circuit judge un-retired after a presidential election. It’s literally unprecedented.” [LOL]
Of course, those interested in playing “political games” with judicial nominations could very easily turn to the Kentucky Republican by saying, “From you, all right? We learned it by watching you.”
If, for example, McConnell seriously wants to have a conversation about what’s “literally unprecedented” when it comes to the politicization of the federal judiciary, the Senate GOP leader might interested in his own record.
It was in February 2016, for example, when then-Justice Antonin Scalia died unexpectedly. Then-President Barack Obama nominated Merrick Garland, a center-left, compromise jurist — who’d received praise from Senate Republicans — to fill the vacancy, which in turn opened the door to a historic opportunity to stop the high court’s drift to the right.
McConnell instead decided to impose an unprecedented high-court blockade for nearly a year, hoping that Americans might elect a Republican president and Republican Congress despite the GOP’s abusive tactics.
It worked: McConnell effectively stole a Supreme Court seat from one administration and handed it to another. He’s repeatedly boasted about the pride he takes in having executed the transgressive scheme.
Nearly four years later, as Election Day 2020 approached, McConnell and his GOP brethren scrambled to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court — abandoning the principles Republicans pretended to care about four years earlier — even as millions of Americans were taking advantage of early voting.
Not to put too fine a point on this, but McConnell has done more than anyone alive to politicize the judiciary. To the extent that anyone is playing “political games” with judicial nominations, they are merely following the playbook the Kentucky Republican authored years ago.
[…] South Korean presidential coup appears to be over. Facing what appears to have been unified political opposition across the political spectrum, including in his own party, and lukewarm support from the military, South Korean President Yoon went before the cameras a few moments ago and announced he was lifting his decree of martial law.
Dubious tech billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy promised to use his new, nongovernmental position with the Department of Government Efficiency to “carefully scrutinize” federal loans made to Elon Musk’s electric vehicle rivals.
In a post on X, Ramaswamy promised to investigate federal loans made to electric vehicle manufacturers not named Tesla under the Inflation Reduction Act.
Ramaswamy’s tirade came the same day the U.S. Department of Energy announced a $7 billion federal loan to two Indiana-based electric battery plants. The two plants, in Kokomo, Indiana, would supply batteries to car manufacturer Stellantis, who owns Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, and Ram.
The loan to create the battery plants in Indiana is expected to create 3,200 construction jobs, and then 2,800 manufacturing jobs when the plants are fully operating. The Rivian project in Georgia is expected to create 7,500 jobs through 2030.
The tech bro’s threats also called into question the Biden administration’s decision to commit $6 billion to support electric vehicle-maker Rivian to produce batteries at a plant in Georgia, last week.
“DOGE will carefully scrutinize every one of these questionable 11th-hour transactions, starting on Jan. 20,” Ramaswamy wrote.
That’s doubtful, according to Wall Street, who doesn’t believe DOGE will be able to accomplish much, if anything, according to a new Goldman Sachs survey. The Daily Beast reports:
Only 10 percent of investors told Goldman they think DOGE will be able to find $400 billion or more in annual spending cuts, while Musk has claimed he’ll find $2 trillion to trim from the $6.7 trillion federal budget. Another 10 percent of investors expect DOGE will manage a more modest $200 billion to $400 billion.
Four in 10 investors, the most to respond to any option, said they expect Musk will find insignificant or modest spending cuts at best, Goldman Sachs said.
Experts have also questioned Musk’s plans, given that interest payments, which can’t be cut, account for 13 percent of the budget, and Trump has promised not to touch major entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, which account for half of all government spending.
Musk has been transparently critical of federal aid to his EV competitors. He has said he would welcome Donald Trump’s promise to kill President Biden’s $7,500 federal tax credit promoting EV vehicle ownership. It’s a self-serving position for someone who relied on the credits in building out his market share for Tesla.
Tesla’s dominant share of the U.S. EV market, once well over 70%, has fallen steadily since 2019. In the months leading up to Musk’s full-throated endorsement and support of Trump, Tesla’s share dropped below 50% for the first time. Analysts have long predicted the EV company would continue to lose market position as more affordable offerings with larger distribution infrastructures became available. [Yes!]
Those analysts clearly didn’t foresee Musk’s ascent into an oligarchical leadership position with Trump. According to The Hill, “The EV maker’s share price is up nearly 45 percent since Election Day, amid expectations that President-elect Trump’s win could benefit the Tesla CEO.”
Having billionaires in charge of any government positions represents an inherent conflict of interest. USA Today reports that the “roughly 800 billionaires” hold more of the country’s wealth than the entire bottom half of our country.
A series of troubling revelations about Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of defense, have emerged over the past few days. But there has been little mention of these controversies on Fox News, where Hegseth worked for years as an on-air host and commentator.
The New York Times published a letter from Hegseth’s mother accusing him of abusing women. A police report detailing an alleged rape has also been released, and reports of purported public drunkenness, use of racial slurs, and possible mismanagement of charity funds have also emerged.
But according to a report from CNN, Fox News has ignored the most recent revelations about Hegseth. Instead of discussing the allegations and how Hegseth being confirmed as defense secretary could seriously affect the U.S. military, the conservative network’s talking heads have instead been singing his praises.
For instance, Brian Kilmeade, co-host of “Fox & Friends,” told viewers on an episode last Tuesday that “a lot of people are pumped up” about the nomination. [video at the link]
Tuesday morning on the same program, Kilmeade discussed “personal attacks” on Hegseth—without referencing any of the reported details.
“I think the volume of some of the personal attacks on some of your nominees is stunning, including our buddy Pete Hegseth, who wrote a book about the Pentagon and served 20 years in the military,” he said during a discussion with Trump spokesperson Jason Miller.
Meanwhile, the right-wing Newsmax network has taken a different approach by daring to discuss the Hegseth stories. [That’s surprising.] [video at the link]
On Monday, Newsmax host Greg Kelly told his audience that the nomination is probably doomed.
“Pete Hegseth is a talented guy with a lot to offer. But this secretary of defense thing is not going to happen,” Kelly said. “It just can’t, not after what we’re learning about.”
Noting the damning content of the letter from Hegseth’s mother, Kelly noted, “Country needs some time to absorb this. Pete can make a contribution, a big one, unlimited, quite frankly, but not right now.”
Kelly also said that he thought Hegseth should have warned Trump about his dicey past before he announced the nomination.
Newsmax is a die-hard pro-Trump outlet. The network spread lies about the 2020 election being stolen by President Joe Biden as part of an effort to bolster Trump. Newsmax was sued by voting services company Smartmatic and later settled the lawsuit (as did Fox News, for its own election lies).
But even Newsmax is not going as low as Fox, which is working in service of its ex-employee by avoiding unpleasant information about Hegseth.
Damaging information about nominees has already blown back on Trump before he is even sworn in for another term. Stories about a sex trafficking investigation and allegations about sex with minors led to Matt Gaetz withdrawing his nomination for attorney general before the Senate even considered it.
Despite the information revealed so far about Hegseth, Senate Republicans appear to be ready to approve his nomination. In an appearance on Fox Business, Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville said “a lot of this stuff was years ago” and made vague assertions that Hegseth’s confirmation hearings should not be about “his past references.”
As the pearl-clutching continues over President Joe Biden’s Sunday pardon of his son Hunter, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer said on Monday that he hopes to work with Donald Trump’s incoming Department of Justice to initiate new investigations into the Biden family and Hunter Biden’s laptop.
Appearing on Newsmax’s “Rob Schmitt Tonight,” Comer was asked how Biden’s decision to pardon his son would affect his future plans.
“I look forward to talking to Attorney General Bondi about this,” the Kentucky Republican said, referencing Trump attorney general nominee Pam Bondi, who still has to be confirmed by the Senate.
Without evidence, Comer went on to allege that the Biden White House is continuing to obstruct investigations into the Biden family. Comer accused Biden, as he has multiple times over the years, of engaging in a “money laundering scheme” with “the money from our adversaries from around the world.” [Video at the link] [President Biden was right, Republicans will not stop.]
Since Republicans took control of the House after the 2022 midterm elections, Comer has focused much of the Oversight Committee’s time and resources on investigating Biden and his family. That effort even involved committee member Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene displaying photos of Hunter Biden’s genitals during a committee hearing.
Before he was ousted in October 2023, then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy signed off on an impeachment inquiry into the president. But ultimately, the Comer-led effort sputtered and failed in August, with no articles of impeachment filed despite years of innuendo and threatening rhetoric.
Democrats on the House Oversight Committee noted in a fact sheet that despite the rhetoric about obstruction from Comer and other Republicans, the committee had received over 14,000 pages of bank records pertaining to the Biden family.
“Not a single transaction shows any wrongdoing by the President,” Democrats noted.
At the same time, reporting alongside the Comer probe showed that Comer himself engaged in ethically dubious financial transactions that echoed his accusations against the Bidens. [Projection on the part of Comer.]
And yet, Comer told Newsmax host Rob Schmitt that Sunday’s pardon of Hunter Biden was “the biggest public corruption scandal ever.” [FFS!!]
U.S. government officials said Tuesday that the China-backed hacking group dubbed Salt Typhoon are still inside some of the networks of America’s largest phone and internet providers, weeks after the long-running hacking campaign first came to light.
Cybersecurity agency CISA said the affected telecom giants are still trying to evict the hackers, in part because it’s unclear what the hackers are aiming to accomplish…
The U.S. government also provided guidance for telecom networks on how to harden their networks from the China-backed hackers, noting that each victim company’s remediation efforts will be unique.
When American presidents visit another country, they typically like to highlight the positive history they share. But as the first leader of the United States to visit Angola, President Biden opted instead to focus on the most bitter chapter that connects the United States and this giant southern African nation.
At the National Museum of Slavery in the capital, Luanda, Mr. Biden recalled in a speech on Tuesday the slave trade that once defined relations between America and Angola. More Africans sold into slavery in the United States came from this part of the continent than from anywhere else, scholars say, a legacy of inhumanity that remains relevant four centuries later.
The president’s decision to emphasize that connection served not only as a nod to the injustices inflicted on generations of Africans, but also as a statement of principle in the contemporary debate underway in his own country about how to teach and remember history. At a time when some Republicans have sought to limit instruction about slavery and other shameful chapters of American history, Mr. Biden argued for confronting the past.
“I have learned that while history can be hidden, it cannot and should not be erased,” the president told an audience at the museum, where he was joined by several Black Americans whose descendants were enslaved in Angola and trafficked across the Atlantic Ocean. “It should be faced. It’s our duty to face our history — the good, the bad and the ugly, the whole truth. That’s what great nations do.”
[…] Among those on hand for Mr. Biden’s visit was Wanda Tucker, a descendant of William Tucker, believed to be the first enslaved child born in the United States. His parents were brought from Angola to colonial Virginia in 1619 aboard the White Lion, a Portuguese ship. The William Tucker 1624 Society was organized to research and share the stories of the first enslaved people brought to Virginia. […]
[In Syria] Hospitals have been ripped apart by airstrikes. Nearly 50,000 people have fled their homes, and tens of thousands lack running water. Civilians are being laid out in body bags on hospital floors after shells struck their neighborhoods. Scenes from the bloodiest days of Syria’s civil war, which had lain largely dormant for several years, are now repeating themselves in the country’s northwest as pro-government forces try to beat back a surprise rebel offensive, according to aid workers, a war monitor and the United Nations, who warned of a rapidly worsening humanitarian situation. […]
You can typically gauge just how badly Republicans want to ravage social safety net programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid upon their return to power by how much they talk on the campaign trail about how they’re not going to do that.
Trump has, throughout his political career, vacillated between utter devotion to the programs and openly musing about slashing entitlements, with his theoretical stance shifting depending on who he’s trying to appeal to at any given moment. On the campaign trail back in March, Trump let slip that he’s interested in across-the-board cuts to social safety nets, saying there’s “a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting, and in terms of also — the theft and the bad management of entitlements.” But as we got closer to the fall, he backtracked, saying he would not touch Medicare or Social Security, conveniently avoiding weighing in on Medicaid.
His campaign also went to great lengths to distance itself from the MAGA manifesto Project 2025 towards the end of the campaign cycle due to the extremist policies it proposed, from abortion bans to proposals to ransack the federal government. Project 2025 also puts forward significant cuts to Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid.
Predictably, as soon as it became clear that Trump had secured a right-wing trifecta, whispers of “reform” to the programs returned, the language Republicans like to use to put a positive spin on their interest in slashing programs that benefit America’s most vulnerable, perhaps in order to justify tax cuts for the wealthy or, perhaps, for no real reason at all.
It started with reports of chopping-block conversations among congressional Republicans as they looked for ways to subsidize the extension of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, which primarily benefit those making $400,000 or more a year and are set to expire in early 2025. Republicans began making noise about “reforms” to Medicaid and Food Stamps programs, which, of course, serve low-income Americans who need health insurance and can’t afford basic, nutritious food.
Then Trump announced he’d nominated the failed Republican Senate candidate and surgeon-turned-TV-medical-crank Mehmet Oz to serve as the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid. In announcing the move he praised Oz, explaining that he would “cut waste and fraud within our Country’s most expensive Government Agency.”
Today, at least one House Republican is imploring his colleagues to stop with the veiled language already and just embrace the fact that the Republican Party is going to look seriously at making substantial cuts to all three programs — if the rest of the conference can buck up and “stomach” it.
“We’re going to have to have some hard decisions. We got to bring the Democrats in to talk about Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare. There’s hundreds of billions of dollars to be saved, and we know how to do it, we just have to have the stomach to actually take those challenges on,” Rep. Rich McCormick (R-GA) told Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo on Tuesday morning, after complaining that “75 percent of the budget is nondiscretionary.”
Of course, when Bartiromo asked him the leading question of whether the defense budget should be cut as well in response, McCormick said he’s “not a big fan of that.”
“When you talk about cutting the budget, I’m all about that. And quite frankly, we need to,” he said.
Donald Trump has tapped billionaire investor Stephen Feinberg to be deputy defense secretary, The Washington Post reports. If confirmed by the Senate, Feinberg would be the No. 2 man in the Pentagon, just below Fox News weekend host (and alleged rapist) Pete Hegseth.
Feinberg is the co-CEO of Cerberus Capital Management, which previously owned private military contractor DynCorp. Cerberus has also invested in defense companies—which is a potential conflict of interest, according to experts.
[…] The Wall Street Journal previously reported that Feinberg was one of two financiers being considered by Trump for the position. Venture capitalist Trae Stephens, a Peter Thiel ally representing a wide range of Silicon Valley military start-ups, was the other rumored choice.
[…] The New Yorker reported back in 2017 that just days before the 2016 election, Feinberg gave a $1 million donation to Trump and wormed his way into the future president’s good graces. The million-dollar bet paid off in 2018, when Trump named the billionaire to head his Intelligence Advisory Board.
Feinberg is just the latest billionaire to be tapped for Trump’s historically wealthy Cabinet.
[…] The US will send Ukraine 3 types of remote mining systems, including antipersonnel mines. These include 155mm “ADAM” shells, portable “MOPMS” mine-laying systems, and “Volcano” systems. With Russia’s ‘meat’ assaults, this could have significant impact. […]
“Idaho’s Ridiculous ‘Abortion Trafficking’ Law Is Back And Microscopically Less Terrible Than Before!”
“‘Abortion trafficking’ is not a thing.”
Bad news for Idaho teenagers who don’t have parents they can trust to help them end an unwanted pregnancy.
On Monday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld most of a grotesque Idaho law that seeks to punish adults who help minors get abortions in other states or procure abortion medication.
This will mean that if a teenager in Idaho gets knocked up and does not have especially understanding parents with whom they feel comfortable discussing this kind of thing, they will have absolutely no other adults they can turn to for help — potentially putting them in serious danger, should they have the kind of parents who might go off the deep end upon finding out that they had premarital sex at all. This puts teens at risk of being kicked out of their homes, being forced to go to a maternity home (these still exist, by the way), or even of serious bodily harm.
The law, meant to punish those who engage in “abortion trafficking,” was initially passed during the 2023 legislative session. It held that “an adult who, with the intent to conceal an abortion from the parents or guardian of a pregnant, unemancipated minor, either procures an abortion… or obtains an abortion inducing drug for the pregnant minor to use for an abortion by recruiting, harboring or transporting the pregnant minor within this state commits the crime of abortion trafficking,” and that this could be punished by two to five years in prison.
It was immediately challenged with a lawsuit filed by advocacy groups Northwest Abortion Access Fund and the Indigenous Idaho Alliance, along with Idaho attorney Lourdes Matsumoto, who frequently represents victims of sexual violence.
US Magistrate Judge Debora K. Grasham found in favor of the plaintiffs, on the grounds that the law violated people’s right to freedom of speech, freedom of travel, and freedom of association.
“The state can, and Idaho does, criminalize certain conduct occurring in its own borders such as abortion, kidnapping, and human trafficking,” Grasham said. “What the state cannot do is craft a statute muzzling the speech and expressive activities of a particular viewpoint with which the state disagrees under the guise of parental rights, as Idaho Code Section 18-623 does here.”
But the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals did not agree and reversed the decision on Monday.
On the semi-bright side, the most patently absurd part of the law is not coming back — the part that makes it illegal to “recruit” teens for abortion, which is not a thing outside of the fevered imaginations of people who only watch movies starring Kirk Cameron and legitimately think that abortions are sacrifices to Satan. Planned Parenthood is not setting up shop at high schools, picking random kids out of a crowd and going “Hey! Has anyone ever told you that you could be great at having abortions?” No one is out here trying to convince anyone that doesn’t want an abortion to have an abortion simply because they want there to be more abortions in the world. That is not a thing.
Of course, this is not acknowledged. All that is acknowledged is that it would be a violation of free speech rights — which it would be.
What will stand is the part of the law banning adults from helping minors get abortions in other states or procure drugs meant to induce an abortion.
“This is a tremendous victory for Idaho and defending the rule of law as written by the people’s representatives,” Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador, who will never have to deal with an unwanted pregnancy himself, said in response to the ruling. “Idaho’s laws were passed specifically to protect the life of the unborn and the life of the mother. Trafficking a minor child for an abortion without parental consent puts both in grave danger, and we will not stop protecting life in Idaho.”
It is unclear how these laws protect the life of the mother when the state has been fighting so hard to be allowed to prosecute emergency room doctors for performing emergency abortions to save the life of the mother. Perhaps he means “afterlife”? […]
“Trump Just Got $18 Million From A Chinese Crypto Scammer”
“Let the new age of grifting begin!”
Did you read our previous stories on a certain family’s [Trump family] can’t-be-sold-in-the-US crypto-token money grab and wonder to yourself, hey, which foreign nationals are going to use this to skirt rules and pass some cash along to the crime-family coffers?
Well, wonder no more. First past the post is Chinese crypto entrepreneur Yuchen “Justin” Sun! If that name sounds familiar, it’s because Sun just purchased Maurizio Cattelan’s $6.2 million conceptual art piece of a banana taped to the wall, and conspicuously consumed it at a press conference in Hong Kong, gleefully exclaiming, “It tastes much better than other bananas. Indeed, quite good. […] I will personally eat the banana as part of this unique artistic experience, honoring its place in both art history and popular culture.” [video at the link]
Now Sun’s taken his place in history for another less-conceptual cash-dropping experience, buying $30 million in crypto tokens from World Liberty Financial. Before Sun’s purchase, the tokens were selling like a wet beer fart, because they are as close to worthless as anything can get. They can’t be transferred, and “investors” can’t even take their “investment” back out. The white paper, we mean GOLD PAPER, is one long disclaimer that boils down to “we’re just gonna take your money, dummy.”
They are “non-transferable and locked indefinitely in a wallet or smart contract until such time, if ever, [WLF tokens] are unlocked through protocol governance procedures in a fashion that does not contravene applicable law.”
The marks do get voting shares to make “governance decisions,” but with no investing and the Trump family controlling the majority of the shares, well, you do the math on what that’s worth. It rhymes with stack spit! At the launch, Big Boss did not seem to know what his product was supposed to be either, rambling incoherently, “It’s crypto, it’s AI, it’s some of the other things, you know, AI, speaking of an interesting future, it needs tremendous energy capability, beyond anything I’ve ever heard…” (Crypto and AI are two different things, and the token has nothing to do with AI.)
And now Sun has bought $30 million “worth” of them, which just happens to be the reserve amount the company said it would hold to cover expenses. Then after the $30 million mark is met, DT Marks DEFI LLC, will receive “75% of the net protocol revenues as defined in the services agreement.” And now there have been $24 million of tokens sold beyond that, which equals $18 million straight into Poppy’s [Trump’s] sock drawer. Sun has also joined WLF as an advisor, putting him into business with the man and his shady pickup-artist and crypto-grifting partners. [Screen grab of announcement is available at the link]
As it turns out, Sun is a little bit of an accused crypto-scammer himself, can you even believe it? [LOL] The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is currently prosecuting him for fraud, hide your surprise! In March of 2023 he was charged with unregistered offer and sale of the crypto asset securities Tronix (TRX) and BitTorrent (BTT) and for “manipulating the secondary market for TRX through extensive wash trading, which involves the simultaneous or near-simultaneous purchase and sale of a security to make it appear actively traded without an actual change in beneficial ownership, and for orchestrating a scheme to pay celebrities to tout TRX and BTT without disclosing their compensation.”
Said celebrities were Lindsay Lohan, Jake Paul, Soulja Boy (née DeAndre Cortez Way), Austin Mahone (maybe the kids have heard of him?), Kendra Lust (aka Michele Mason, an actress in films for grownups), Lil Yachty (née Miles Parks McCollum), Ne-Yo (Shaffer Smith), and Akon (Aliaune Thiam), who all plugged the crypto on their Xitter feeds, with scripts that Sun’s companies gave them. They collectively paid $400,000 in disgorgement, interest, and penalties to settle the charges. LOL, Lohan was paid $10,000 in actual money, but dumbshit Paul took his fee in crypto token magic beans. […]
[…] you’d think the media would be all over this story, but no, they are too distracted by his starving-for-attention purchase of that duct-taped banana. Noted Judd Legum over at Popular Information,
The New York Times, for example, has published five articles about Sun’s purchase of the banana but none about Sun’s $30 million purchase of WLF tokens and his business partnership with Trump.
The Washington Post has published three articles about the banana, but its coverage of Sun’s purchase of WLF tokens was limited to one short paragraph in a larger editorial about the crypto industry. (The paragraph does not explain how Trump personally profits from Sun’s token purchase.) The Wall Street Journal did publish a short piece about Sun’s token purchase on its “Live Update” blog, but the piece was not viewed as significant enough to be included in the print edition. The paper published two articles, plus a video, focused on the banana. One of the Wall Street Journal articles about the banana was published on the front page of the paper.
To their credit, Bloomberg did notice that the past-and-future president pumping a scammy scheme to enrich himself directly from foreign investors whose money would be untraceable unless they bragged very loudly about it on the Internet is notable news. […]
Chad Chronister, Donald Trump’s pick to run the Drug Enforcement Administration, said Tuesday he was withdrawing his name from consideration, becoming the second person selected by the president-elect to bow out quickly after being nominated for a position requiring Senate confirmation.
Sheriff Chronister, the top law enforcement officer in Hillsborough County, Florida, said in a post on X that he was backing away from the opportunity, which he called “the honor of a lifetime.”
“Over the past several days, as the gravity of this very important responsibility set in, I’ve concluded that I must respectfully withdraw from consideration,” Chronister wrote. He did not elaborate, and Trump’s transition team did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment…
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team said it reached an agreement on Tuesday with the Justice Department that will allow it to submit names for background checks and security clearances, needed for access to classified information.
Trump’s team last week signed a separate agreement allowing direct coordination with federal agencies and access to documents, but had put off signing an agreement with the Justice Department while talks continued…
Bekenstein Boundsays
Lynna@71: I thought land mines were banned worldwide?
The Department of Government Efficiency, headed by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, appears to be signaling its intention to tackle daylight saving time. Musk has indicated support for ending semiannual clock changes in recent days on his social media platform X, sharing a poll showing majority opposition to the practice.
DOGE co-head Ramaswamy also backed the stance, calling time changes “inefficient and easy to change.”
The initiative follows a failed 2022 legislative attempt, the Sunshine Protection Act, which passed the Senate but stalled in the House. The Department of Transportation, which oversees time changes, cannot alter the system without congressional action…
Republicans will have a narrow majority in the House next year with Democrats flipping one final seat in California, leaving GOP leaders with even less margin for error as they try to advance President-elect Donald Trump’s agenda.
Democrat Adam Gray has defeated GOP Rep. John Duarte in a rematch in California’s 13th District in the Central Valley following weeks of ballot counting, NBC News projects, meaning Republicans won 220 House seats in the 2024 elections to Democrats’ 215. The GOP can lose just two votes on legislation in the House in the next Congress if Democrats all vote in opposition, giving them little wiggle room for absences, internal fighting and vacancies…
Lynna, OM @ 67
.
Americans have the memory of goldfish.
In the 1980s Reagan’s USA supported the Unita guerrilla as “freedom fighters” as they deliberately planted landmines everywhere, targeting civilians to Ruin food production. Unita also press-ganged the local populations as work forces to support the Unita guerrilla.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union the bosses of Unita and the Angolan government cut a deal to share power, and the profits of oil. The formel leader of unita eventually fell out with the others and tried to re-start the civil war but without foreign support he was crushed.
It seems he was just another war lord without popular support. Once he had served his purpose he stopped being a “freedom fighter” in US media. The hundreds of thousands dead, or mutilated by land mines are forgotten.
But I remember.
.
Joe Biden would have been in congress back in the day, backing the foreign policy status quo (when he wasn’t confirming right wing supreme court justicea). May he and his cronies burn in hell.
birgerjohanssonsays
Re. @ 80
Goddammit, I forgot to celebrate Kissmas Nov 29th, the death of Henry Kissinger.
The Swedish princess Birgitta (who would have been a monarch if the rules in 1972 had not been sexist) has died. She was 87.
Unlike Elizabeth II she did not lord it over concentration camps in Kenya and Malaya. And to my knowledge none of her children is an ephebephile.
This non-malign low-key life is one of the reasons why the Scandinavian royal families retain their popularity despite the obsolete institution (but the Norwegian one got a baddie recently).
(Ohio, USA)
The Satanic Temple will launch its own religious release program at Edgewood Elementary in the Marysville Schools district as a counter to LifeWise Academy, which currently offers religious educational programming in the district.
The Salem, Massachusetts-based Satanic Temple first announced the program in a Nov. 23 Facebook post and spoke to WOSU on Wednesday.
Satanic Temple representative June Everett said the Hellions Academy for Independent Learning, or HAIL program, aligns with the organization’s beliefs called the “7 tenets.”
Everett said the Satanic Temple has been launching the program during school time in response to LifeWise Academy doing the same thing…
KGsays
Bekenstein Bound@76,
The Ottawa Treaty aims to ban landmines worldwide, but only states which have signed and ratified it are bound by it, as with any international treaty. Neither the USA nor Russia has done so, although Ukraine apparently has. But personally I’d cut them some slack on this: they are laying mines on their own territory to impede invaders, and have every incentive to keep careful records of where they have placed them. I believe the mines concerned have a limited activation span, although such things are never perfectly effective.
ADAM stands for Area Denial Artillery Munition and is a system that uses artillery projectiles to plant mines. You fire the shell, the mines deploy and arm themselves. The mines are detonated electrically, so when the battery runs down they are supposed to self destruct.
[text from Daily Kos]
New York Times:
The provision of land mines to Ukraine has been condemned by a variety of lawmakers and human rights groups because of the indiscriminate nature of those weapons. Anti-tank land mines cannot tell the difference between an enemy tank and a civilian car that drives over them, just as smaller anti-personnel mines are unable to distinguish whether they are being triggered by an enemy soldier or a noncombatant.
The White House authorized sending land mines to Ukraine in September 2023. It initially provided 1,000 155-millimeter artillery shells it calls RAAMS, for Remote Anti-Armor Mine System, which are fired from howitzers and scatter small mines to destroy enemy tanks.
Weapons such as these are called nonpersistent mines because they are designed to self-destruct after a preset amount of time, though such safety features often fail in combat.
The Pentagon said it has sent more than 70,000 such shells to Ukraine as of Oct. 21.
In April 2023, the Pentagon announced it would send 1960s-era M21 heavy anti-tank mines to Ukraine. Those weapons do not have a self-destruct feature and stay lethal until they are cleared by bomb-disposal experts.
On Nov. 20, the Pentagon announced it would send anti-personnel land mines to Ukraine, despite a June 2022 White House directive banning such transfers.
According to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, White House officials told nonprofit organizations on Nov. 22 that the United States would send three types of anti-personnel mines to Ukraine, all of which contain self-destruct features.
The first is a 155-mm shell called the Area Denial Artillery Munition that pops open midair and releases 36 small mines, which deploy tripwires once they land on the ground. When the tripwires are disturbed, the mine ejects a small warhead that explodes.
The second version, called the Modular Pack Mine System, can be carried by two soldiers, and dispenses 17 anti-tank mines and four anti-personnel mines into the surrounding area.
The last is called Volcano, which throws a similar mix of anti-personnel and anti-tank mines from cylinders that are mounted on trucks or helicopters to quickly create minefields.
The drawdown announced on Monday will provide a second shipment of anti-personnel mines to Ukraine.
Ukraine’s President Zelensky last week described landmines as “essential” for the defence of Ukraine and welcomed a United States (US) package of military assistance that includes antipersonnel mines.
Upon confirming on the transfer decision, US defense secretary Lloyd Austin said that Ukraine has asked the US to provide Ukraine with antipersonnel mines and the US has talked to Ukraine about how Ukraine would employ them. Austin also said that Ukraine is fabricating its own antipersonnel mines.
The State Department notification for the aid package published late on November 20 specified that “non-persistent anti-personnel landmines” are being provided.
At a meeting on November 22, White House oPicials told representatives from non- governmental organizations that three types of antipersonnel mines are being sent to Ukraine: ADAMs, Volcano, and MOPMs. More information on each type follows below. [details at the link]
[…] Humanitarian Considerations
During the Ottawa Process to negotiate the Mine Ban Treaty, the US tried but failed to secure a loophole in the treaty text that would have allowed for antipersonnel mines equipped with self- destructing and/or self-deactivating features. Its proposal failed to gain support and the resulting Mine Ban Treaty comprehensively prohibits all types of victim-activated explosive devices, regardless of their predicted longevity, delivery method, or type of manufacture (improvised or factory-made).
In theory, a mine that blows itself up in a relatively short period of time should pose less danger to civilians than a mine that lasts for years or decades. However, so-called “non-persistent” or “smart” mines are not safe mines. They still pose unacceptable risks for civilians, cause new mine victims, and the clearance task is just as dangerous, costly, and time-consuming.
[…] Legal and Policy Implications
Until now, the US had accepted that self-destructing and self-neutralizing antipersonnel mines should be eliminated. It has spent more than a billion dollars to find alternatives to these weapons. The US has prohibited export of all antipersonnel mines since 1992 and has not produced antipersonnel mines since 1997.
Receiving and using US antipersonnel mines and manufacturing its own antipersonnel mines puts Ukraine in willful violation of the Mine Ban Treaty and raises by far the most serious compliance challenge that the international treaty has ever faced.
The US landmine transfers contradict President Biden’s own landmine policy announced in June 2022, which re-aligned US policy with key provisions of the Mine Ban Treaty. Under that policy, which White House oPicials say remains in place, the US has committed to “not assist, encourage, or induce anyone, outside of the context of the Korean Peninsula, to engage in any activity that would be prohibited by the Ottawa Convention.”
The new US landmine transfers have more in common with a January 2020 policy directive announced by the administration of President Donald Trump that allowed the US to develop, produce and use antipersonnel landmines as long as they are “non-persistent,” that is, “designed and constructed to self-destruct in 30 days or less after emplacement and will possess a back-up self-deactivation feature.” […]
Rob Manfred has floated another idea that would drastically change the foundation of how Major League Baseball is played.
The MLB commissioner recently shared on Puck’s “The Varsity” podcast that the idea of implementing the “Golden At-Bat” has gained steam among owners.
“There are a variety of (rule change ideas) that are being talked about out there,” Manfred said on the podcast. “One of them — there was a little buzz around it at an owners’ meeting — was the idea of a Golden At-Bat.”
Manfred’s comment was actually made back in October, but resurfaced in recent days due to a story from The Athletic. In the story, MLB officials reportedly declined to elaborate further on what the rule would entail.
However, Manfred hinted at what the “Golden At-Bat” would look like.
“[It’s] putting your best player out there out of order at a particular point in the game,” Manfred said. “That rule and things like that are in the conversation-only stage right now.” …
[…] Skrmetti v. U.S. is nominally about Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors, an echo of laws passed in many red and purple states. Biden’s Department of Justice, along with a few trans kids, is challenging the ban […]
This case boils down to a simple question: Does a state’s decision to deny medical care to some people based on sex trigger heightened scrutiny (a higher bar the law must pass to survive legal review)?
Tennessee claims that it’s not discriminating based on sex, because neither boys nor girls can get hormones or puberty blockers if they want those things to transition.
This falls apart pretty quickly upon closer inspection. Minors who want those things for other reasons — say, to treat precocious puberty — can get them without running afoul of the law. In other words, the first group of minors are prohibited from getting that medical care because they are trans.
Tennessee is explicit about this, writing in the law itself that it’s “encouraging minors to appreciate their sex.”
The state also argues that trans people do not comprise a “quasi-suspect class,” or a group that, when targeted with legislation, triggers heightened scrutiny automatically (race is a suspect class category that triggers strict scrutiny; sex is a quasi-suspect category that triggers intermediate scrutiny).
The 6th Circuit, which sent the case here, sided with Tennessee, finding that the law only triggered rational basis review — the lowest standard — because trans people do not qualify as a quasi-suspect class. The Supreme Court has never ruled on where sexual orientation fits into the suspect class framework. Tennessee makes much hay in its briefs about the fact that the Court would be “expanding this Court’s limited list of quasi-suspect classifications for the first time in half a century” if it includes trans people in those classes.
If the Court lets the trans care ban get through on only rational basis review, we’d expect other laws rooted in sex discrimination to follow. Republican legislators would cover those laws in assertions that they affect both sexes equally, or that the discrimination is rooted in fundamental, biological difference (another argument from the 6th Circuit opinion).
Trans Kids’ Lawyer: You Guys Had No Problem Doing Health Policy When It Was COVID Restrictions
This is part of what’s striking — Roberts, Kavanaugh and Barrett applying this super selective humility about how they can’t possibly have the expertise to make a call here.
Kavanaugh Doesn’t Want To Remand
He’s saying that the case will just reach the Supreme Court again in a year. The DOJ wants to send the case back down and have it reconsidered with heightened scrutiny.
[… The DOJ’s position has a more robust evidentiary backing.
“In recent years, States across the Nation have enacted a staggering number of laws targeting transgender individuals,” it writes. “And the accompanying rhetoric underscores how transgender individuals face a distorted political process. Legislators have called transgender Americans ‘mutants,’ ‘demons,’ ‘imps,’ ‘filth,’ and ‘delusional.’”
It adds: “Their transgender status bears no relation to their ability to contribute to society, yet they face a wave of hostile legislation targeting them in all areas of life. And that wave will undoubtedly grow if this Court holds that laws discriminating against transgender Americans — which could include, for example, laws prohibiting them from adopting children or becoming licensed as teachers — warrant only the most deferential review under the Equal Protection Clause.”
[…] A lot in Skrmetti smacks of legal fights over abortion access: Unusual government intrusion into safe health care practices, a flurry of pseudo-science to insist that those practices are actually not safe or to play up side effects, disregarding of the consensus of the medical community, the rhetorical tic that the legislators are actually protecting people by barring them from health care that they want and need.
Dobbs itself is quoted throughout Tennessee’s briefs.
It’s notable that the right wing has become one with the anti-trans movement in the wake of Dobbs […] Trans rights directly affect a much tinier slice of the population than abortion rights do, but based on the hundreds of millions of dollars the Trump campaign poured into its anti-trans ad campaign, Republicans are clearly game to try it out as a replacement, alongside the other anti-abortion wars they continue to wage.
[…] Look at what Gorsuch wrote in his Bostock majority opinion, keeping in mind Tennessee’s argument that it can’t be sex discrimination if it’s blocking both boys and girls from using cross-sex hormones: “An employee who intentionally fires an individual homosexual or transgender employee in part because of that individual’s sex violates the law even if the employer is willing to subject all male and female homosexual or transgender employees to the same rule.”
[…] Uh Oh: Roberts Opens With A ‘Shouldn’t We Leave It To The States?’ Argument
This is the easiest way for Roberts and Gorsuch to duck what they just said four years ago in Bostock — the sporadic interest in washing their hands of obligation and letting states make the call (which disappears on all manner of other topics including student debt, environmental regulations, etc. etc.). It’s also been the cover for their anti-abortion decisions.
He asks whether the “medical nuances” of the case don’t “make a stronger case to leave the determination to the legislative bodies?”
[…] Alito is opening with a cherry-picked batch of European evidence (including the infamous Cass report) to demand that SG Elizabeth Prelogar “withdraw” her statement about the benefits of gender-affirming care.
Again, this smacks of abortion litigation — anti-abortion activists love to cite gestational bans in European countries to make American bans look relatively liberal (they always omit the fact that most European “bans” include exceptions for things like emotional/economic distress that are never present in U.S. ones).
Sotomayor Jumps In To Rebut Alito
She’s systematically picking apart his arguments that gender-affirming care is actually very dangerous and that this case has no relation to Bostock.
She’s now going over the intense suffering that trans children go through when they can’t get care, asking “isn’t intermediate scrutiny necessary to be sure we don’t make these personal judgments?”
[…] Kagan muses that “what’s really going on here is discrimination against and a disregard for young people who are trans.”
Kavanaugh Taking Roberts’ Route
He says that “the Constitution doesn’t take sides” and that there are “forceful arguments on both sides” so why not leave it to the “democratic process?” Real abortion echoes here — which conveniently skates over the fact that one side’s arguments entail granting people the right to needed health care, and the other prohibits it.
Kavanaugh Raises ‘Detransitioners’
This is the trans version of the women who regret their abortions that are always trotted out by anti-abortion activists. It’s disingenuous because the numbers are so lopsided — most women do not regret their abortions, and most trans people do not regret transitioning. Divorcing these divides from the numbers helps those on the right pretend that there are fine arguments on both sides.
Barrett Claims Trans People Do Not Have History Of ‘De Jure’ Discrimination
She claims there’s only been “private” discrimination — after saying that Bostock is an “odd fit” here. Not sounding likely that she’ll buck Tennessee either.
If there is a lack of historical discrimination, it makes it harder to give trans people heightened legal protections.
Important Moment: Jackson Points Out Echoes In Interracial Marriage Bans
There too, you could see the facial discrimination — but advocates of banning interracial marriage said that they didn’t racially discriminate because Black people couldn’t marry white ones and vice versa. It’s very similar to the “this ban applies to both boys and girls” argument Tennessee is making here.
[…] “Make America Great Again.” is the Trump Mega-metanarrative. Those with him don’t care about any policy, discussions, policy positions, or really any details about how he will achieve that goal. They like the emotion of it. As one commentator put it in the 2024 presidential race, Donald Trump was held to a kindergartener standard while Kamala Harris was held to a presidential standard. As resisters, we will now reject that bullshit. Our use of metanarratives will hold Trump to the highest standards and force-feed his followers our image in a way they understand. The simplest one is a fact: “Mad King Trump is a Dictator” or “Trump is a Tyrant.” All of his acts will validate our framing while saving millions of unsaid words.
[…] This is a good time to recommend that you get off corporate Social Media and scrub your history. If you have been on Twitter, then be prepared by mid-January 2025 to transition to Blue Sky, which is not owned by a single corporate ruler who owns literally everything you’ve written. Copy your tweets using widely available apps, and then delete your entire Twitter history. Make sure the direct messages are gone also because they became the property of Elon Musk the moment he bought it. Facebook is simply an intelligence collection platform for whoever pays them the highest.
[…] Reestablish Face-to-face interaction with friends. Once a day or a few times per week, I meet with my friends at a café in my village. There, we discuss the news of the day, but we do it face-to-face rather than via text message, DM, or video chat. That way, the communications that occur there belong to us and are not documented. It also goes back to restoring your humanity. Try it with your family and immediate friends, especially as the situation grows more dire.
UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot and killed in New York City on Wednesday morning, police said.
New York police commissioner Jessica Tisch said the shooting was a “brazen, targeted attack.”
“This does not appear to be a random act of violence,” Tisch said during a briefing. “Many people passed the suspect, but he appeared to wait for his intended target.”
The suspect was “lying in wait for several minutes” before he saw Thompson walking to the hotel where UnitedHealth Group was holding an investor conference, Tisch said. The suspect approached Thompson from behind and fired several rounds, striking the victim at least once in the back and once in the right calf.
The shooter arrived at the location on foot about five minutes prior to Thompson’s arrival, Chief Jeffrey Maddrey said. The shooter appears to be a light-skinned male who was wearing a light brown or cream-colored jacket, a black face mask, black and white sneakers and a “very distinctive” grey backpack.
“The motive for this murder currently is unknown, but based on the evidence we have so far, it does appear that the victim was specifically targeted, but at this point we do not know why,” Maddrey said.
The shooter fled on foot until he picked up an electric CitiBike, which he rode into Central Park. The suspect is still at large and police are offering a $10,000 reward for information. […]
Welcome to your first ever early morning liveblog or at least the first ever by me, your friendly, neighborhood Crip Dyke.
“But Crip Dyke!” you say. “You never live blog. What could possibly have gotten you up at 7 a.m. Pacific on a Wednesday to write at us?”
Good question! It is the live audio of Supreme Court oral arguments (SCOTUS refuses to share video) on a case arising out of Tennessee called US v. Skrmetti, a name which I have been accused several times of making up. While not without reason, I promise you that if I were ever to make up a name for the attorney general of a MAGA state it would involve a couple of waffles, many more taints, and at least one melonfucker.
No, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti is a real guy who looks rather like the child of that time Ferris Bueller hate fucked Tucker Carlson on a ball tanning bed.
While I shall in future spare you his face — let’s just agree to use pictures of Ferris — I cannot spare you a look at the ugly anti-trans politics of Tennessee’s Senate Bill 1, which bans health care procedures or insurance coverage for them when used to help trans people and doesn’t ban and does pay for when used to help non-trans people, known as “cis-sexual” or “cis,” which Elon Musk insists is a slur.
Trans kids and their parents won their case at the trial level, lost it on their first appeal, and then petitioned the Supreme Court to hear their arguments that Tennessee is treating trans kids unequally to an extent that is unconstitutional and also that the state is interfering with parents’ rights to make health care decisions for their own children.
That petition languished unanswered, and so OHJB’s DoJ stepped in and petitioned for SCOTUS to hear just the equal protection argument. It’s a bit impolitic for the Supreme Court to refuse to hear arguments in a disagreement between the federal government and one of the states, so that put the pressure on. As a result, SCOTUS granted only the federal petition and the case that started life as L.W. v. Skrmetti got renamed US v. Skrmetti and arguments have been narrowed to only the equal protection interests of the feds.
That makes this case very important. How important? The key issue today is actually just that: How important is it when a state treats its citizens differently? Tennessee wants the courts to believe that treating people differently is no big deal and that any old rationale, even a flimsy one resting on poor evidence, is good enough to pass any constitutional hurdle.
[…] This is the “rational basis” standard, and it makes it super easy, barely an inconvenience for a government to discriminate.
The feds and the lawyer for the kids and their parents will be arguing to place a more difficult hurdle in Tennessee’s path to discriminating against trans kids. They’ll be arguing for “intermediate scrutiny.”
Because rational basis is so easy to overcome, if Tennessee wins on the issue of what test to apply, Tennessee will also win on the substance. The hurdle for the good guys is a bit different. Even if the Court agrees that applying intermediate scrutiny is the correct standard, the test itself has been handled somewhat differently by different justices in different cases. But getting the Court to agree to apply intermediate scrutiny would be a huge win even if the Court ultimately does not throw out Tennessee’s law.
And this really is the important part: Win or lose on health care, if the court decides to back away from decisions that applied intermediate scrutiny to positive effect, cases like Romer v. Evans and US v. Virginia, then “equal protection under the law” could fail to protect a lot more than just trans people. Intermediate scrutiny has been applied in a number of areas, but the area most likely to be impacted by the decision in US v Skrmetti is gender, and last time Yr Wonkette checked, there are a whole lot of people with gender in these here United States.
[…]
Crip Dyke’s timestamped live coverage follows the introduction above. See the link for the details. It’s good, and worth reading.
Excerpt:
10:05 Looks like we’re getting started a wee bit late this morning. SG Prelogar [US Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar] is up first […]
10:10 And we’re off. Prelogar starts off with the important point that treatments aren’t banned, only trans-positive purposes.
6th circuit never considered the standard to be implied — intermediate scrutiny — and should be sent back for that analysis.
The law depends on a sex-based classification and therefore facially requires some level of heightened scrutiny.
Justice Gorsuch Is this really a ban since adults can access care? How does Equal Protection (EP) apply?
Yes, it’s really a ban, even if it’s only a ban for children, and if this case does not raise heightened scrutiny then the state could ban all care for adults any time later.
10:14 Thomas: If we on the court aren’t doctors, shouldn’t we leave this decisions to legislators who are much more educated about trans health care?
Prelogar: Hahahahaha. Heightened scrutiny is still required for laws relating to medicine. That doesn’t mean that legislatures don’t get a say, it just means that EP isn’t abandoned.
Roberts: Yeah, but different ages for men and women buying alcohol is not the same as all this medical nuance.
Prelogar: There is no evidence of nuance. The risks for the medications are the same regardless of purpose.
10:20 Alito: But Sweden says that there are risks! And the UK’s Cass Report says there’s no evidence that benefits outweigh risks! Why did you say that all the evidence says that treatments are beneficial?
Prelogar: No, the evidence is strong. The fact that idiots exist around the world does not make the evidence different than it is. [Ha! Well said by Crip Dyke, who paraphrases the legalese throughout this reporting]
Alito: But England! Cass Report! NHS!
Prelogar: To the extent that you think there’s evidence that’s not at all part of the trial record that should be considered, that’s a reason to send this back to the 6th for reconsideration. Also, EVERY country, including the UK, says that these treatments are sometimes medically necessary.
Alito: But the Cass Report! You only mentioned it in a footnote!
Prelogar: As I understand it, Tennessee is not the UK. Also, the UK hasn’t said what you are saying that they said.
10:26 Alito You seem to be looking at Bostock for guidance on how to determine what is a facial sex classification, but Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health hated women pretty thoroughly, and I think it would be a good idea to treat trans people with the same contempt. [LOL regarding Crip Dyke’s paraphrasing here.]
Prelogar Here we have a facial sex classification, and if you think we don’t, I think you’re probably having difficulty recognizing what a face is.
Alito But here’s a law that hypothetically fucks over trans health care that doesn’t contain a facial sex classification.
Prelogar Okay, but that’s not this law. There are other issues with that law, but your point doesn’t have anything to do this case, so why are we doing this?
[…] Alito Pregnancy isn’t a proxy for sex.
Prelogar Well, sometimes it is, but we didn’t have the same language in previous cases, so it’s fair to look at the actual law at issue here to determine whether it discriminates based on sex. Considering a law from 50 years ago that is completely different doesn’t make sense at all.
Oh thank goodness, we’re done with Alito. On to Sotomayor.
Sotomayor: All the European countries recognize that this care is sometimes necessary?
Prelogar: Yes.
Sotomayor: Isn’t EP to guard against common sense notions that were actually just prejudice? And isn’t this necessary treatment?
Prelogar: Well, I’ll skip that first part and just say that it is medically necessary.
Sotomayor: One of the petitioners described throwing up? And going mute from anxiety? And isn’t the hurdle of intermediate scrutiny for the purpose of making sure that our stereotypes are double checked before they cause harm?
Prelogar: Yes. And states are not entirely barred from legislating here, but this is a sweeping ban with serious impacts and leaves the very same treatments entirely available for any other purpose that doesn’t threaten its stereotypes. It’s bad. […]
“Florida State Senate Lady Wants To Ban Government From Controlling The Weather”
“Warning, this story will lower your IQ.”
[…] Florida state Senator Ileana Garcia filed a bill to ban the DEEP STATE from controlling the weather.
Garcia’s bill would prohibit the injection, release, or dispersion of any substance or apparatus into the atmosphere within Florida’s borders “for the express purpose of affecting the temperature, the weather, or the intensity of sunlight.” Or else, $10,000 fine! DEEP STATE, you are ON NOTICE!
The weather-control conspiracy theory has been seized on by such great minds as Marjorie Taylor Greene and Laura Loomer, so you know it’s good. […]
Garcia makes her concern about chemtrails clear on her Xitter feed. [Xitter post available at the link]
She Xitted further: “I hope this legislation can help dispel fears about alleged chemtrails. It is essential to put doubts to rest by implementing safeguards that ensure weather modification is never weaponized due to governmental negligence or a lack of public engagement. We should welcome open dialogue and investigation rather than dismissing these discussions as conspiracy theories.”
And then she got more defensive:
I find it remarkable how some media outlets are shaping the narrative around the weather modification activities bill, SB 56. At no point have I suggested that recent hurricanes were provoked by weather modification techniques. The bill was drafted to address concerns and raise awareness surrounding these issues.
On the contrary, let’s debunk them.
Unfortunately, my statements have been selectively edited to fit a specific narrative, fundamentally altering the essence of my response. While these outlets criticize conspiracy theories, they frequently produce sensational articles that provoke ideological backlash and politicized shame. This approach feels more like a pursuit of clickbait and traction than a genuine quest for truth.
ICYMI, “chemtrails” is a conspiracy theory that’s been around since at least the ‘90s, alleging that the condensation particles released by airplanes is actually some kind of chemical or biological agent that the government is releasing that’s controlling people’s minds, or the weather, or making the frogs gay, or something like that.
“Let’s debunk them”? Lady, they have been debunked for decades, over and over. At least try to get attention with a new conspiracy theory. The EPA, the FAA, NASA, the Air Force, and NOAA have been putting out fact sheets about condensation trails since 2000, trying to explain to the stupids what the vapor patterns behind planes are, and how atmospheric conditions can change how long they appear in the sky. But of course because the government is behind releasing those fact sheets, well, all those government denials are just what a chemtrail-releasing government would say!
It seems like if the Deep State has invested the amount it takes to achieve weather control, a $10,000 fine would not be much of a deterrent. Also cloud-level airspace would be federal airspace anyway, not the state of Florida’s. […] What kind of half-assed mind- and weather-control scheme does she think these people are running? And SHE is with the government! How do you know her bill is not just another psyop to make you THINK they are stopping the chemtrails, so you’ll go outside and take a deep breath? HM? Maybe this article was typed by a cloud!
A more likely conspiracy theory is that anytime a nobody Republican politician is looking for some love from the lowest-of-information voters, they start “just asking questions.” Looking at you, Pennsylvania Senator and loser for governor Doug Mastriano, and you, state of Tennessee, and Richmond, California, Councilwoman Jovanka Beckles!
Welp, I now feel dumber having learned about all of this, and probably you do too.
On Tuesday, the mobile device security firm iVerify is publishing findings from a spyware detection feature it launched in May. Of 2,500 device scans that the company’s customers elected to submit for inspection, seven revealed infections by the notorious NSO Group malware known as Pegasus.
The company’s Mobile Threat Hunting feature uses a combination of malware signature-based detection, heuristics, and machine learning to look for anomalies in iOS and Android device activity or telltale signs of spyware infection. For paying iVerify customers, the tool regularly checks devices for potential compromise. But the company also offers a free version of the feature for anyone who downloads the iVerify Basics app for $1…
“South Korean President Very Sorry He Tried To Do That Coup That You Do”
“Oh did he try to arrest the opposition leaders? His bad.”
Late Tuesday night in South Korea (Tuesday morning here in the US), President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law in what looked like a hissy fit because the nation’s parliament keeps not voting how he wants it to. A few hours later, the National Assembly voted to lift martial law, and Yoon, accepting that’s how his country’s constitution works, said OK FINE and agreed to comply with the parliamentary vote. Shortly after that, the streets of Seoul were full of protesters demanding Yoon resign, as is just and fitting.
Seems to us there could be a lesson for aspiring American dictators and the national legislature here, too, but then we’re prone to wild flights of fancy like that.
In his late-night martial law declaration, Yoon said that the opposition party must be cleansed of “anti-state” forces who he claims are actually sympathetic to North Korea’s communist government. We are not even slightly close to experts on Korean politics and that sure sounds like bullshit to us. [I agree.]
Yoon’s martial law declaration had also banned “fake news” and “manipulating public opinion,” which you also don’t have to be an expert on South Korean politics to understand only applied to Yoon’s opponents.
The military, perhaps nostalgic about the good old days of the 1970s and ‘80s when governments were toppled by a series of authoritarian strongmen, announced the immediate suspension of the parliament and of political gatherings likely to cause “social confusion.” For good measure, the military ordered doctors, who have been striking for months, to get back to work within 48 hours or face immediate arrest without a warrant. Authoritarians gotta throw their authority around.
Several hours after Yoon’s declaration, in an emergency session held in the wee hours of Wednesday morning local time, the National Assembly, ignoring the military’s declaration that it was suspended, went right ahead and voted to lift martial law, which is a thing it has the power to do under South Korea’s constitution. National Assembly Speaker Woo Won Shik said the martial law decree was invalid, and said the lawmakers “will protect democracy with the people.”
Reuters reports that after the vote,
Police and military personnel were seen leaving the Assembly’s grounds after Woo called for their withdrawal. Lee Jae-myung, leader of the liberal Democratic Party, which holds the majority in the 300-seat parliament, said the party’s lawmakers will remain in the Assembly’s main hall until Yoon formally lifts his order.
The 190 National Assembly members who were able to attend the emergency session voted unanimously to lift martial law. [Image of CNN reporting is available at the link.]
In an embarrassing subhead that has long outlasted the crisis, CNN reported that “South Korea’s parliament voted to block the president’s martial law degree” and asked “What happens next?” So far, more uncertainty and some petty spelling nitpicks by American bloggers.
Once past the headline, which remained defiantly uncorrected when we wrote this story, the CNN story offers some genuinely useful information about the emergency powers available to South Korea’s president and the balancing options that its parliament can take:
[The] president has the power to declare extraordinary martial law, which allows special measures influencing freedoms of speech, press, assembly and association.
The president must then notify the National Assembly of his decision — but if a majority of lawmakers vote to lift martial law, “the president shall comply,” according to the constitution.
The president’s cabinet must then “deliberate” and review the decision to lift martial law, according to the constitution.
We had already written a draft speculating that Yoon would probably dismiss the National Assembly’s vote, both because he thinks it’s full of commies, and because the Strongman Playbook obviously required him to whine that the National Assembly was already suspended, so no fair, they were on a break.
We love being wrong sometimes! Yoon instead announced that he was waiting for his full cabinet to arrive so the declaration could be formally lifted, and called attention to how the nice troops had left the National Assembly building after the vote passed.
But as the Times also reports, that came only after Jo Seoung-lae, spokesman for the opposition Democratic Party, said that military personnel had entered the building and tried to arrest both Democratic Party leader Lee Jae-myung and the head of Yoon’s own People Power Party, Han Dong-hoon, who had called for Yoon to reverse the order. The military also tried to arrest National Assembly Speaker Woo Won-shik. Jo called the attempt to prevent the National Assembly from holding its vote a “coup d’etat and a plot to overthrow the government.”
The New York Times explained in a separate story that since being elected in 2022, Yoon has been consistently blocked by the opposition party, and he’s increasingly become a fan of the whole would-be dictator thing that all the world’s rightwing assholes have been experimenting with lately. Peer pressure and all that:
Soon after he was elected, however, Mr. Yoon began turning to lawsuits, state regulators and criminal investigations to clamp down on speech that he called disinformation, efforts that were largely aimed at news organizations. Police and prosecutors repeatedly raided the homes and newsrooms of journalists whom his office has accused of spreading “fake news.”
In April, Mr. Yoon’s People Power Party suffered a stinging defeat in parliamentary elections, giving the opposition a huge majority. He became the first South Korean president in decades to contend with an opposition-controlled Parliament for his entire time in office.
CNN reported, before the resolution of the crisis, that President Joe Biden, who’s touring Africa this week, was very carefully not commenting on the situation in South Korea, telling reporters early on he was “just getting briefed on it.”
You can see why Biden would want to be very careful, given the US-South Korea military alliance, the notorious bromance between Donald Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, and Trump’s already clear indifference to democratic norms. Trump supporters have long urged him to declare martial law, and the last thing he needed was a model from South Korea.
As of yet, we haven’t seen any comment from Trump on yesterday’s emergency in South Korea, possibly because none of his top advisers have yet succeeded in explaining to him that it’s not the Korea whose leader he’s smitten with, or because Trump can’t be convinced to stop making racist jokes about all those funny Korean names.
“As Donald Trump tries to wrest control away from the legislative branch as part of an ugly power-grab, too many in Congress are happy to go along.”
In the early 1990s, then-Sen. Tom Daschle was preparing for his first one-on-one meeting with then-President Bill Clinton. He wasn’t altogether sure what to say, so the South Dakota Democrat turned to then-Sen. Robert Byrd for advice.
The West Virginian thought for a moment before telling Daschle, “You tell him you’re happy to work with him, but not for him.”
This, of course, is the traditional model in American governance. Presidents have always had partisan allies on Capitol Hill, but most lawmakers have also always cared about their own powers and institutional authorities. Congress is a co-equal branch of government, and its members have long balked at the idea that they somehow work for the White House.
It’s a fact that too many Republicans appear to have forgotten. CNN reported this week, for example, on how one leading senator is approaching some of Donald Trump’s most contentious cabinet nominees.
Republican Sen. Michael Crapo, who will chair the Senate Finance Committee that will hold confirmation hearings for several positions, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be the Department of Health and Human Services secretary, said he will accept whatever Trump wants. “No, I’ll let that be a decision that President Trump makes,” he said when asked if he will insist on background checks performed by the FBI. “My position is what President Trump decides to do is what I will support.”
[JFC. What a lackey.]
It’s one thing for powerful senators to effectively become rubber-stamps for their party’s president; it’s something else when powerful senators effectively admit that they’ve voluntarily become rubber-stamps for their party’s president. [puppets]
What’s more, it’s not just Crapo. Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville recently told Fox News that Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance will soon be “running the Senate.” The Alabaman added that, as far as he’s concerned, it’s not up to senators to “determine” whether Trump’s cabinet nominees have merit.
That’s the opposite of the lesson the coach-turned-politician should’ve learned from Civics 101.
Around the same time, Republican Rep. Troy Nehls of Texas added, in reference to the president-elect, “He’s got a mission statement, his mission and his goals and objectives, whatever that is, we need to embrace it, all of it, every single word. … If Donald Trump says, ‘Jump three feet high and scratch your head,’ we all jump three feet high and scratch your heads. That’s it.”
The problem isn’t just that these GOP lawmakers appear indifferent to separation of powers and their own advise-and-consent role. The problem is made worse by the fact that Trump — to a degree without modern precedent — is trying to wrest control away from the legislative branch as part of an ugly power-grab.
The Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus recently published an important summary on this, highlighting the degree to which the president-elect is setting the stage for an “alarming takeover,” focused on “a vast, dangerous and unconstitutional expansion of presidential power.”
This agenda, Marcus added, “includes not just emasculating the Senate’s advice-and-consent role but also refusing to spend money that lawmakers have appropriated.”
It’s against this backdrop that senators like Crapo said, “My position is what President Trump decides to do is what I will support.”
The Post’s Aaron Blake said the comment put the Idaho Republican in Congress’ “fealty caucus,” and it seems that faction already has too many members.
whheydtsays
Re: Lynna, OM @ #99….
I really wish these people would stop referring abject obedience to “fealty”. Properly, fealty goes both ways. The vassal has obligations to the feudal lord, but there are also reciprocal obligations from the feudal lord (such as coming to the defense of a vassal). These people are probably also unaware that fealty is not transitive. As it was put in the Middle Ages… The vassal of my vassal is not MY vassal.
Putin’s niece accidentally revealed the approximate number of missing Russian soldiers
Russian authorities have received 48,000 DNA test requests to search for missing Russian soldiers, according to Anna Tsivileva, Deputy Defense Minister and Putin’s niece, during a statement in the State Duma.
The head of the State Duma Defense Committee, Kartapolov, requested that “these numbers not be mentioned anywhere else” and that this information be removed from official documents.
For the second time in one year, the US Labor Department has fined a janitorial service contracted by Seaboard Triumph Foods in Sioux City, Iowa, for employing children to do dangerous work in overnight shifts at their pork processing plant.
Investigators found that Qvest Sanitation “employed 11 children to use corrosive cleaners to clean head splitters, jaw pullers, bandsaws, neck clippers and other equipment at the Seaboard Triumph Foods facility from at least September 2019 through September 2023.”
I do not know what most of those things are, but context clues lead me to believe that they are not things children should be around — ostensibly sleepy children in particular. And I’m not alone! Federal law, in fact, prohibits anyone under the age of 18 from doing such dangerous work.
This judgment follows a $649,000 judgment in May against Fayette Janitorial Service LLC, the sanitation service that Seaboard Triumph Foods contracted after Qvest, over the exact same issue. Fayette was found to have employed at least two dozen children, some as young as 13, to work at the Sioux City plant and a Perdue plant in Virginia. Nine of the children they employed worked for Seaboard Triumph Foods, several of whom were rehired by Fayette after taking over for Qvest.
[…] The slaughterhouse itself has not been fined, though they certainly seem to bear some culpability. It seems doubtful that five whole years went by and not one person stayed late enough at work to notice that there were tweens bleaching the head splitters.
[…] In addition to the fine, Qvest will also be required to do the following
– Hire a third-party consultant or compliance specialist with knowledge and experience in complying with the FLSA’s child labor provisions within 90 days.
– Direct the compliance monitor to review company policies immediately, provide annual training at all facilities the company operates and monitor and audit Qvest’s compliance for at least three years.
– Provide training and materials on child labor compliance in languages understood by employees.
– Maintain accurate records of all employees, including date of birth and work tasks assigned.
– Establish a toll-free hotline for guidance and/or to report child labor compliance concerns anonymously.
– Take measures within 60 days to ensure the company is not employing any workers under the age of 18 in jobs prohibited by the FLSA.
– Submit an initial compliance report and annual reports thereafter for three years to the department verifying compliance with child labor laws.
Qvest itself maintains that it does not actually even know what the Department of Labor is on about. Adam Greer, the company’s vice president of operations, says he can’t even say if they really used child labor or not because the DOL “has declined to provide us with any names or specific information related to the alleged violations.”
“In spite of this,” he said, Qvest has not only fully cooperated with the Department of Labor “but is and has been committed to strengthening our onboarding process.”
Sure they are!
Seaboard’s lawyer says that the real problem isn’t that these companies are hiring children, but that they are being victimized by high-quality identification documents.
Via The New York Times:
Paul DeCamp, a former head of the Labor Department’s wage and hour division who is now a lawyer for Seaboard, said in a statement that the situation with Qvest “underscores the problems facing employers throughout the country: individuals, including minors, obtaining jobs through their use of fraudulent identification documents.”
Those documents, he said, are “sophisticated enough to fool even the federal government’s E-Verify system,” adding that “businesses are victimized by this fraud.”
[…] Speaking as someone who was a fairly tall 13-year-old, I’m going to need to point out that even fairly tall 13-year-olds do not generally look anything like 18-year-olds and that if high quality identification documents are a problem, people might want to utilize their own eyeballs as well, if only as a stopgap to accidentally hiring children to do anything with anything called a “jaw clipper.”
I am not a big believer in incarceration to begin with, in large part because I think it’s not very effective — but it’s just a little bit galling that people guilty of something as heinous as employing children to clean a slaughterhouse simply get fined, while people found guilty of far less serious crimes spend years in prison. Personally, I’m a lot more concerned by people who can look at middle schoolers slaving away all night in a pork processing plant and go “Well, this all seems fine!” than I am by someone who does or deals drugs or shoplifts. Frankly, given the choice between being locked in a room with the Artful Dodger or Mr. Bumble, I’m going with the Artful Dodger every time.
“Rudy Giuliani Has 99 Self-Made Problems, And He Is All Of Them”
[…] there is a Roodles update! That pants-dropping Scotch-soaked troll is a gift to yr Wonkette, because everything he does is so comically awful.
Okay, yes, it is not funny at all how he has completely ruined the lives of Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, the two Georgia elections workers who were happily living their lives and minding their own business when he decided to defame them with his racist election-stealing lies. Nor is it hilarious how they will never work again because the notoriety and harassment he bestowed upon them make them pretty much unemployable, not to mention how they will spend the rest of their lives being dogged by an army of MAGA trolls. […] whatever amount they get from him will never be enough to give them back their lives.
But, this dumb turkey and his self-made problems!
When we last left off, his lawyers had quit him, on account of unspecified “professional ethics” concerns, ahem. But now he’s got a new lawyer, a divorce lawyer and former police officer from Staten Island named Joe Cammarata! And while el Roodles hired Joe from Staten Island to arglebargle in New York that the case should be postponed because of his ever-so-important social engagements, and also for his DC Circuit appeal on the merits, he apparently did not hire Joe the divorce lawyer for the second defamation action he has in DC, for contempt. For that one, he appears to be representing himself. Or not representing himself, as it were!
The action was an injunction filed by Freeman and Moss’s lawyers last December, because America’s Mayor™ can’t stop, won’t stop, defaming them. It got put on pause after he filed his bullshit bankruptcy motion, which he ended up withdrawing after refusing to cooperate in his own bankruptcy which he asked for, and being on the verge of getting kicked out of court by the judge […] So now Rudy is liquidating, and the pause got mooted when he consented to STFU. But of course he is still defaming Freeman and Moss anyway, constantly, to anybody who will listen to a “quadruple-counting votes” rant on the courthouse steps, or on his MyPillowGuy-sponsored podcast.
So on November 20, Judge Beryl Howell warned Rudy but good that if he failed to respond by this past Monday, December 2, the court would consider it “conceding” Freeman and Moss’s motion for contempt and would invite them to pick appropriate sanctions. And, fail to respond he did. So now he’s ordered to be back in DC December 12, and the court can attach assets that would otherwise be judgment-proof in the collection action. Like some of that $43,000 a month he gets from his retirement funds and Social Security? We shall see!
Meanwhile, back in New York last week, [Giuliani] lost his shit in court again. While he has finally turned over Lauren Bacall’s car, he did not turn over the keys, or the title, which he claimed he just couldn’t find. And the judge was like, you were a US Attorney, you can’t figure out how to get a copy of the title for a car? Which triggered Rudy to interrupt the judge and start hollering that he’d applied for one, but it hadn’t come yet. “I did apply for it! The implication I’ve been not diligent about it is totally incorrect, the implication you make is against me and every implication against me is wrong! I have no car, no credit card, no cash, everything I have is tied up, they have put stop orders on my business accounts, and I can’t pay my bills!”
(Note that the Florida DMV says a duplicate title takes five working days, and Rudy was ordered to turn over the title more than a month ago.)
The screaming led to some amazing courtroom sketches by the inimitable Jane Rosenberg, as also seen above. Check her describing his blurty, interrupty loony behavior on CNN, with a slideshow. https://www.tiktok.com/@cnn/video/7441858145607028014
Anyway, we repeat, Rudy gets $43,000 a month from his retirement accounts. And he does not have a driver’s license, so therefore doesn’t need a car. All of those Uber rides are part of how he somehow managed to spend $120,000 in just one month last January.
The judge (who is a Trump appointee, by the way) told Rudy to STFU, and, “next time, he’s not going to be permitted to speak, and the court will take action.” […]
So, what next? Freeman and Moss did get his watches, or at least some of them, and their lawyers found his storage unit in Ronkonkoma, though a facilities spokesman calling himself “Joe the Box” posted, then deleted, a “a defiant video on X in which he expressed support for Mr. Giuliani and said he would not stand for someone to ‘dissect’ the former mayor’s life.” Roodles has until December 13 to account for his property and deliver it to a facility of Moss and Freeman’s choice. Though he still has not turned over the paperwork for his New York condo, which has been complicated by his ex-wife Judith’s name still being on it. In jail like yesterday would have been more satisfying, but Judge Liman is apparently a patient man.
Then January 16 he has another trial in New York about his Florida condo and those World Series rings his chimpy son claims that Rudy gifted him. And no, Trump can’t pardon him or get him out of this mess. Maybe he will appoint him ambassador to Italy?
“Prime Minister Michel Barnier is expected to resign after the vote against him and his Cabinet, sending the country into a political crisis.”
The French government was toppled Wednesday after far-left and far-right lawmakers joined forces to pass a no-confidence measure against Prime Minister Michel Barnier and his Cabinet.
Barnier, a conservative who held the post of prime minister for barely three months, is now obliged to tender his resignation, and that of his government, to French President Emmanuel Macron.
It was the first time since 1962 that a French government was ousted like this. […]
Barnier’s foes in France’s lower house of Parliament needed 299 votes to oust him.
They got 331 after Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally joined with the leftist coalition in the chamber to oust the Barnier government.
[…] Barnier, who was appointed by Macron in September, told French TV on Tuesday that it was “possible” he could survive. But as the votes were tallied it quickly became clear that he was about to become the head of the shortest-lived government in French history.
Macron’s political future is also on the line.
Under the French system, Macron is responsible for appointing prime ministers to be approved by Parliament. But he cannot dissolve the legislative body again until next year.
While he could try to bring Barnier back in, appoint a successor or an apolitical government of technocrats, all would be vulnerable to dethroning by the far-right.
If Macron “cannot get a government together with the support of a majority in parliament, he is going out and going to come under increasing pressure to resign,” Douglas Webber, an emeritus professor at the INSEAD business school, based in Paris, told NBC News on Tuesday.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Donald Trump on Wednesday announced that he tapped Peter Navarro to serve as senior counselor for trade and manufacturing, making him the second person Trump picked for his administration that has served federal prison time.
Navarro, who served as a Trump trade adviser in the first Trump administration, was released from federal prison in July after serving a four-month sentence for refusing to comply with a congressional subpoena. Navarro—who pushed Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen—both refused to testify and supply documents to the now-defunct House Select Committee probing the Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the U.S. Capitol.
[…] Navarro took pride in his decision to refuse to testify before Congress in the Jan. 6 probe, bragging about it in a speech at the Republican National Convention in July, the same day he was released from prison.
“The J6 committee demanded that I betray Donald John Trump to save my own skin. I refused,” Navarro said. He added “I went to prison so you won’t have to. I am your wakeup call.” [video at the link]
Trump brought up Navarro’s conviction in a Truth Social post announcing that he is bringing Navarro back to help him implement his destructive tariff plan that will amount to a tax hike on every American.
“I am pleased to announce that Peter Navarro, a man who was treated horribly by the Deep State, or whatever else you would like to call it, will serve as my Senior Counselor for Trade and Manufacturing,” Trump wrote. “During my First Term, few were more effective or tenacious than Peter in enforcing my two sacred rules, Buy American, Hire American. He helped me renegotiate unfair Trade Deals like NAFTA and the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (KORUS), and moved every one of my Tariff and Trade actions FAST.” [sounds like a threat]
Navarro is the second convicted felon Trump has picked for his administration.
Over the weekend, Trump tapped Charles Kushner to be ambassador to France. Kushner—who is Ivanka Trump’s father-in-law—was sentenced to two years in prison after pleading guilty in 2004 to filing false tax returns, lying to the Federal Election Commission, and retaliating against a witness. Trump pardoned Kushner in 2020 […]
And lest we forget, Trump himself is a convicted felon, as he was found guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal hush money payments he made to a porn actress who claims to have had an affair with Trump.
Aside from nominating actually convicted criminals to his administration, Trump has also nominated multiple people accused of sexual assault to serve in high-level Cabinet roles. That includes now-former Rep. Matt Gaetz , who had to withdraw his nomination to serve as attorney general because Republicans were uncomfortable with the child sex trafficking allegations Gaetz faces. There is also Fox News personality Pete Hegseth, whose nomination to serve as secretary of defense is in trouble amid allegations of rape and alcohol abuse.
Before billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy became co-chairs of Donald Trump’s bogus Department of Government Efficiency, Ramaswamy had all kinds of awful things to say about Musk, the Tesla CEO and world’s richest right-wing misinformation peddler. CNN’s KFile did a deep dive into Ramaswamy’s history of disparaging statements about his new co-chair.
“I think Tesla is increasingly beholden to China,” Ramaswamy opined during a podcast in 2023 in response to the company’s announcement that it would be building a new battery plant in Shanghai. “I have no reason to think Elon won’t jump like a circus monkey when Xi Jinping calls in the hour of need.”
Musk’s reliance on China has only increased over the years, and he has been trying very hard to maintain a favorable relationship with the country that provides a large share of his company’s profits as well as so much of the raw materials used in Tesla’s EV batteries.
In May 2023, Ramaswamy wrote on X that while he appreciated Musk’s purchase of the social media platform, Musk and other “prominent business leaders” were “puppets” of the Chinese Communist Party.
Ramaswamy further criticized Musk in a subsequent post.
“Now the crusader for “free speech” (@elonmusk) kisses the ring of the world’s biggest censor: Xi Jinping,” he wrote.
Musk and Ramaswamy have promised to use DOGE to target hundreds of billions of dollars in government spending cuts by focusing on slashing funding to entities such as the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which receives $535 million a year. It is an interesting tactic for Musk, whose entire business empire was buoyed by billions (with a “B”) of taxpayer dollars.
“Both Tesla and SpaceX quite likely would not exist as successful businesses if it were not for the use of public funding,” Ramaswamy told a Fox News podcast in 2022. […]
The increasingly tense trade battle over technology ramped up on Tuesday when China announced a ban on the exporting of rare minerals to the U.S. […]
Predictably, Ramaswamy has changed his tune toward Musk and is now even promising to use DOGE to harass and possibly extinguish Musk’s domestic EV rivals. [hypocrite]
According to Ramaswamy, he now has heart eyes for Musk.
“I love him and respect the hell out of him, and I’m proud to call him a friend,” a smarmy Ramaswamy told CNN. “The only country he puts first is the same one I do: the United States of America.”
It’s easy to see how they’re now simpatico, since they both have the same obsessions: money and power.
A chaotic night in South Korea produced scenes most thought were consigned to the nation’s history.
One in particular has caught the attention of many: a woman confronting soldiers who were sent to block lawmakers from entering the National Assembly.
Footage of Ahn Gwi-ryeong, 35, a spokesperson for the opposition Democratic Party, grabbing the weapon of a soldier during the commotion has been shared widely online.
“I didn’t think… I just knew we had to stop this,” she told the BBC Korean Service…
Trump Guitars – the series of guitars endorsed by the incoming 47th American President – has made changes to the models advertised on its official website after Guitar World broke the news that Gibson issued a cease and desist order to Trump Guitars owner 16 Creative.
“We can confirm a cease and desist has been issued against 16 Creative as the design infringes upon Gibson’s exclusive trademarks, particularly the iconic Les Paul body shape,” a Gibson representative confirmed on November 25.
The statement referred to the line’s initial single-cut electric American Eagle and Presidential series models, which infringed upon Gibson’s trademarks and the legacy brand’s Les Paul design.
As a result, Trump Guitars updated its Presidential series. The new 22-fret design, available in black, gold, and red, features a mahogany body and neck, a rosewood fretboard with “Make America Great Again” inlays, and, keeping in line with the brand, “Magabenders” strings and Maga 45 “Trumpbuckers.” The guitars are currently available for pre-sale…
Republican Austin Theriault on Wednesday ended a recount in his congressional race in Maine and conceded to Democratic U.S. Rep. Jared Golden, bringing to an end the closely watched contest a month after Election Day.
Theriault decided to end the recount before its completion after early results did not show a significant change in the outcome after Golden won by 2,706 votes using the state’s ranked choice voting…
South Korea’s parliament introduced a motion on Thursday to impeach President Yoon Suk Yeol over a botched attempt to impose martial law, but his party vowed to oppose the move, throwing the process into doubt.
Lawmakers could vote for the bill as early as Friday. Yoon’s ruling People Power Party said it would oppose it but the party has been divided over the crisis. The opposition Democratic Party, which has a majority in parliament, needs at least eight ruling party lawmakers to back the bill in order for it to pass…
The European Union on Wednesday condemned the Taliban for violating human rights and women’s access to education after media reports that the Taliban’s leader has ordered private and public institutions to stop providing medical courses for women and girls in Afghanistan.
[…] In September 2021, a month after they returned to power, the Taliban stopped schooling for girls after grade six. They banned women from university in December 2022.
Medical education, like nursing and midwifery, was one of the few ways they could continue their learning in classrooms.
The BBC and others reported that five institutions across Afghanistan said the Taliban had instructed them to close until further notice, and women training as midwives and nurses were ordered not to return to classes Wednesday. […]
[…] Trump on Wednesday nominated former Sen. Kelly Loeffler, one of the wealthiest people ever to serve in Congress, to head up the Small Business Administration.
“Small Businesses are the backbone of our Great Economy,” Trump wrote, boasting that Loeffler will “bring her experience in business” to “unleash opportunity” for small businesses to “grow, innovate, and thrive.”
Despite her new gig, the obscenely wealthy Loeffler—founder of a cryptocurrency company and former owner of a WNBA team—doesn’t really embody the idea of small business.
The announcement comes after rumors circulated that Loeffler would be tapped as the secretary of agriculture. […]
She briefly represented Georgia in the Senate from 2020 to 2021 before losing in a runoff election to Sen. Raphael Warnock.
A day before the runoff, Loeffler stood alongside Trump at a campaign rally where he spewed claims of voter fraud and authoritarian calls to overturn the 2020 presidential election. [blatant lies that Trump lackeys repeat]
To add insult to injury, she also faced accusations of insider trading after she dumped millions of dollars in stocks following a private briefing for senators in January 2020. [!!!]
Loeffler is just the latest Trump administration pick with scandals in their closet. […]
birgerjohanssonsays
Texas May Pay The Ultimate Price For Trump’s Policies
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=kpZMGRtuY1k
Oh dear, a Republican state getting hit first? It is as if the fear of transgender people and immigrants was misguided.
Pennsylvania steelworkers are feeling a “gut punch” after President-elect Donald Trump said he would block the $14.9 billion sale of U.S. Steel to a Japanese company.
On Monday, Trump reiterated a campaign promise, pledging on Truth Social to block the deal. He wrote: “I am totally against the once great and powerful U.S. Steel being bought by a foreign company, in this case Nippon Steel of Japan.
“Through a series of Tax Incentives and Tariffs, we will make U.S. Steel Strong and Great Again, and it will happen FAST! As President, I will block this deal from happening. Buyer Beware!!!”
Steelworkers union that backed Trump and wanted sale to happen surprised that Trump plans to keep his campaign promise to block the sale. Something about Leopards eating people’s faces.
Not all steel workers unions are in favor of the sale but it is an amusing direct stab.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
In a move drawing stark feedback from medical professionals, Anthem Insurance has decided to cap anesthesia coverage at a time limit. If an anesthesiologist submits a bill where the actual time of care is longer than Anthem’s limit, the company will deny paying for it, saddling patients with thousands of dollars in surprise additional medical debt.
--
The CEO of UnitedHealthcare insurance group (whose parent company is the world’s largest health insurer), was repeatedly shot to death in Manhattan as he walked to an investor conference.
Bekenstein Boundsays
So, the guillotining of the plutocrats has begun.
Welcome to the Roaring 20s.
Again.
birgerjohanssonsays
Stephen Colbert:
Trump Considers DeSantis Over Hegseth | Zuckerberg Dines At Mar-A-Lago | South Korea’s Six Hour Coup.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=8DU6jp9dLLM
A billionaire tech entrepreneur and private astronaut is Donald Trump’s choice for the next NASA chief. The president-elect announced via social media today (Dec. 4) that he has picked Jared Isaacman, the founder and CEO of payment-processing company Shift4 Payments, for the job of NASA administrator. Isaacman has spaceflight experience: He has funded and commanded two groundbreaking private missions to Earth orbit, both of which flew with SpaceX hardware.
Efforts to build a barrier to keep invasive carp out of the Great Lakes are one step closer to reality.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced Wednesday that it awarded the first construction contract on the $1.15 billion project at the Brandon Road Lock and Dam on the Des Plaines River in Joliet, Illinois.
The Corps awarded a $15.5 million contract to Miami Marine Services to prepare the site and remove rocks from the river bed. The contractor will partner with Milwaukee-based Michels Construction.
It’s the first of three construction phases that will install defenses there to keep the fish from getting past the crucial choke point. Those tools include noisemakers, a bubble curtain, an electric barrier and a flushing lock…
Polish scientists have created crisps made from carp meat, describing them as “crunchy, tasty and above all healthy”. They hope the product can encourage the consumption of carp all year round in Poland rather than just during the Christmas period, as is currently the case…
As a postscript, I might mention that modern military hardware manufactured in these countries have performed very well in Ukraine against even the modern Russian hardware. :-)
Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for defense secretary, said on Wednesday he would not “back down” as new misconduct allegations cause growing concern among Republican senators tasked with whether to confirm him.
Well he understands basic politics. He won’t back down or admit it’s a possibility right up until he backs down.
He’s also promised senators he’s stopped drinking and won’t drink if confirmed, according to Missouri Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt. Some of the misconduct accusations included claims he has been drunk in public.
Always nice to get a good laugh. Exactly the sort of thing an alcoholic would say and good reason to vote against his nomination.
Tethyssays
I always find it interesting to read the comments on news stories such as the OBVIOUS assassination of the insurance CEO in Manhattan.
Nobody has any sympathy for the billionaire who became obscenely wealthy by DENYING their customers medical care and killing them after saddling them with crushing debts.
JM @127, if you have to promise to stop drinking if you are confirmed, well then you are already not qualified for the job.
SteveoR @122, Of course Trump chose another billionaire.
In other news: Politico reported:
President Joe Biden’s senior aides are conducting a vigorous internal debate over whether to issue preemptive pardons to a range of current and former public officials who could be targeted with President-elect Donald Trump’s return to the White House, according to senior Democrats familiar with the discussions.
Commentary:
[…] In case this isn’t obvious, the idea behind preemptive pardons is to shield innocent people from potential — by some measures, likely — prosecutorial abuses before they happen. In other words, people close to Biden believe Trump and his loyalists, hellbent on revenge and fueled by retaliatory ambitions, will probably pursue illegitimate investigations into perceived foes — and the outgoing Democratic president can prevent that from happening by issuing a sweeping set of pardons now, before exiting the White House.
The Politico report coincided with a lengthy and spirited written statement from Rep. Brendan Boyle of Pennsylvania — the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee and Biden ally — who weighed in on the intra-party debate.
“By choosing Kash Patel as his FBI Director, Trump has made it clear that he is more focused on settling personal scores than on protecting the American people or upholding the rule of law,” Boyle wrote. “Patel has openly published an ‘enemies list’ in his book, naming individuals he and Trump plan to investigate and prosecute — targeting those who stood up to Trump’s lies, abuses of power, and baseless attempts to overturn the 2020 election. This is no hypothetical threat. [True. It is not a hypothetical threat.]
“The people they’re targeting include law enforcement officers, military personnel, and others who have spent their lives protecting this country,” the congressman added. “These patriots shouldn’t have to live in fear of political retribution for doing what’s right. That’s why I’m urging President Biden to issue a blanket pardon for anyone unjustly targeted by this vindictive scheme.
“If we’re serious about stopping Trump’s authoritarian ambitions, we need to act decisively and use every tool at our disposal,” Boyle concluded, adding, “The time for cautious restraint is over. We must act with urgency to push back against these threats and prevent Trump from abusing his power.”
This is not, however, an easy call. Just as there’s no precedent for Trump’s retaliatory ambitions, there’s also no precedent for an outgoing president issuing blanket pardons for those who’ve done nothing wrong. Indeed, such a step might leave the impression that the beneficiaries need Biden’s protection, even if the facts suggest otherwise.
What’s more, it’s not altogether clear whether those included on such a list would even accept such a pardon.
And in case that weren’t quite enough, I wouldn’t envy those trying to come up with such a list. Where would it end? Biden would probably want to protect Jan. 6 committee members, for example, as well as military personnel who’ve been on the receiving end of Trump’s over-the-top condemnations. But what about the Clintons? And abortion providers? And Dr. Anthony Fauci?
There’s a school of thought that suggests that even if Trump and his minions were to try to bring bogus charges against any or all of these people, it wouldn’t matter because the cases would be thrown out of court. That’s possible. It’s also possible that the cases would end up before a Trump-appointed judge who was indifferent to the merits.
Either way, the cases would be expensive and difficult nuisances for the Republicans’ targets, which the retiring president is no doubt aware of. [I don’t think “nuisances” is the right word. If Trump targets people the resulting legal wrangles could bankrupt them. And Trump’s cult followers might threaten the target’s life.]
This discussion probably won’t end anytime soon, though with Jan. 20 looming on the calendar, Biden’s timeframe is limited. Watch this space.
The Athletics’ move to southern Nevada is expected to take a major step forward Thursday when the 30-year lease, non-relocation and development documents are likely to be approved by the Las Vegas Stadium Authority following a rise in the estimated cost of the ballpark by $250 million to $1.75 billion.
Those agreements could be the last major hurdles before construction can begin in the spring on a Las Vegas Strip stadium projected to open for the start of the 2028 season, a ballpark in which underseat cooling is planned…
Missouri Republican lawmakers this week filed an onslaught of legislation to reinstate some level of abortion ban after voters enshrined the right to the procedure last month.
At least 11 pieces of legislation filed during the first week of bill filing center on curtailing, or outlawing, abortion access in Missouri. The bills come just weeks after voters effectively overturned the state’s ban through a constitutional amendment, called Amendment 3…
A man has sustained serious injuries after leaping to the rescue of his wife who was ambushed by a polar bear in an early morning attack, police said…
When authorities arrived, they discovered during their investigation that an adult male and adult female “had exited their home before 5 a.m. to find their dogs. While in the driveway of their home, a polar bear lunged at the woman,” police said.
“The woman slipped to ground as her husband leapt onto the animal to prevent its attack. The bear then attacked the male, causing serious but non-life-threatening injuries to his arm and legs,” Nishnawbe Aski Police Service continued.
During the attack, a neighbor reportedly arrived with a firearm and was able to shoot the bear several times before it retreated to a nearby wooded area and subsequently died from its injuries…
A new, widespread power outage plunged Cuba into darkness on Wednesday after one of the island’s major power plants failed, leaving millions without electricity and forcing authorities to suspend classes and work activities indefinitely.
The Electric Union, the state-run power company, attributed the incident to the shutdown of the Antonio Guiteras Thermoelectric Plant in Matanzas province, east of Havana. The blackout, which occurred shortly after 2 a.m., affected the entire nation, the company said on X.
As of Wednesday morning, power began to be restored gradually in some parts of the country, including Havana…
The U.S. and Britain announced on Wednesday they had disrupted what they described as a global money laundering ring used by rich Russians to evade sanctions, and which London said laundered cash for drug traffickers, criminals and spies.
Britain’s National Crime Agency said the internationally coordinated law enforcement effort codenamed ‘Operation Destabilise’ had disrupted the network spanning 30 countries.
The operation also involved authorities in France, Ireland and United Arab Emirates, the NCA said. It had so far led to 84 arrests, and the seizure of over 20 million pounds ($25 million) in cash and cryptocurrency…
Under owner Elon Musk, the social media site X, formerly known as Twitter, has become a hotbed of white supremacist and neo-Nazi content. A recent headline in the Atlantic doesn’t mince words: “X is a white supremacist site.”
Musk has allowed formerly banned far-right and neo-Nazi accounts back on the platform, and, in some instances, he’s directly responded to accounts that traffic in white supremacist and neo-Nazi rhetoric. Meanwhile, anonymous accounts that regularly promote racial hate on the platform have seen their follower counts grow […]
Anonymity has long been a tactic used by extremists to spread their ideology while avoiding consequences, from Klansmen hoods to online pseudonyms. With such ideas spreading rapidly on X, the Texas Observer has identified the operators of four anonymous accounts that regularly share racist, antisemitic, and neo-Nazi content on the platform. Three of the operators appear to live or have claimed to own property in Texas, where X moderation operations are based and Musk resides.
Through reviewing posts on X, web archives, leak databases, and other social media profiles, the Observer identified the following individuals as the anonymous operators of neo-Nazi X accounts, which had a collective 500,000 followers at their peak: Cyan Cruz, a 40-year-old marketing professional who appears to have lived in Austin and Amarillo and operates the X account TheOfficial1984; Michael Gramer, a 42-year-old retired mechanical engineer who has lived in New Hampshire, operates the X account 9mm_SMG, and has claimed to have a house in Galveston and to be spending time in Dallas; Robert “Bobby” Thorne, a 35-year-old vice president at JP Morgan Chase in Plano, who operates the account Noble1945 and previously operated the account Noble_x_x_; and John Anthony Provenzano, a 30-year-old who appears to live in Virginia, operates the account utism_ (formerly known as JohnnyBullzeye), and, according to a tip and a records request response from the U.S. Navy, works at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Indian Head, Maryland—where the Navy manufactures explosive ordnance.
[…] Their rise to prominence tracks with a dramatic decrease in moderation of hateful content on the platform, which dropped from 1 million moderated accounts in 2021 to only 2,361 accounts in the most recent 2024 X transparency report. Posts from these individuals have received tens of millions of views over the last year and a half. The accounts have also attracted the attention of major public figures. Two of the accounts have received replies from the X account of Elon Musk, who has said he writes all of his own X posts and who, as reported by Mother Jones, has amplified users who promote pseudoscientific arguments that those of European descent are biologically superior. Three of the accounts are followed by a sitting congressman, and many other right-wing media figures and outlets follow at least one of the four accounts. [graph at the link]
[…] [Details of Musk’s interactions with the accounts are available at the link.]
In October 2022, Musk committed in another post on X to ensuring “negative/hate tweets” would be “deboosted and demonetized” and not generate revenue for the social media platform. In practice, this promise appears to have been sometimes broken. The Observer found advertisements in the replies to posts from all four accounts, including posts that featured pro-Nazi, antisemitic, pro-Hitler, or neo-Nazi content. […]
The X account belonging to Republican U.S. Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky follows three of the four neo-Nazi accounts, while the account belonging to GOP Arizona state Senator Wendy Rogers follows two. The account belonging to Sebastian Gorka, former and future deputy assistant to Donald Trump, follows 9mm_smg, and the account belonging to Chuck DeVore, an executive at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, has retweeted one of 9mm_smg’s posts.
CYAN CRUZ/THEOFFICIAL1984
Cruz’s X account, TheOfficial1984, regularly posts antisemitic, pro-Hitler, and Holocaust denial content on X, racking up hundreds of thousands or even millions of views. His account was recently disallowed from receiving subscription or ad sharing revenue for violating X policies, but ads still appear in the replies to his posts. Cruz has now been identified by the Anti-Defamation League in addition to the Observer.
[more details at the link] Cruz, whose last name suggests and whose DPS database record lists that he is of Hispanic descent, may fit into a broader trend of Latinos drawn to neo-Nazi ideology.
MICHAEL GRAMER/9MM_SMG
Gramer’s account, 9mm_smg, features antisemitic posts, references to neo-Nazi slogans and concepts such as the “14 words” and “blood and soil, and discussions about national socialism and fascism, which he has said he would prefer to our current democratic system. He has also expressed admiration for Oswald Mosley, an early 20th century British fascist politician who espoused antisemitism and was closely associated with leaders of the German Nazi party.
According to his own posts, Gramer is a “white nat[ionalist]” who attended a white nationalist music festival and discusses the “JQ,” [Jewish Question] but also insists he is not a fascist, neo-Nazi, or white supremacist.
[more details at the link] Other than what’s found in the Twitter breach, Gramer has a minimal digital footprint, though he has posted several censored pictures apparently of himself on X, showing distinctive tattoos on his arm and hands. [This image, and many others, are available at the link.]
ROBERT THORNE/NOBLE1945 (FORMERLY NOBLE_X_X_)
Thorne’s former account noble_x_x_ was suspended for violent speech in mid-June 2024, at which time it had at least 31k followers. The specific violent tweet he was suspended for says: “The streets are a much safer place with both of them gone”, referring to George Floyd and another Black man who was killed by police while reportedly experiencing a mental health crisis.
The account had previously shared pictures of swastikas, statements of Holocaust denial, and the phrase “Sieg Heil”, and had repeatedly identified its operator as “a Nazi” and “National Socialist”.
A second account featuring the same profile picture, noble1945, was created in October 2023, writing in one tweet: “If you’re following me on this account check out my main account at @noble_x_x_ I’m only here because of a week long ban on that one.” This account is still active at the time of publication and has around 7,000 followers.
[…] “Every X account has a numeric identifier that is unique to that account and cannot be changed,” said Brown. “A particular account or tweet may have multiple URLs associated with it if the account owner changes the screen name, but the account ID will always be the same and can be found by viewing the source of the profile or tweet page in a web browser. This makes it possible to identify profile changes by comparing current account IDs and their screen names with IDs and screen names from archives such as the Wayback Machine.”
[…] In response to a request for comment from the Observer, Michaela Ross, vice president of media relations and executive communications with JP Morgan Chase, responded via email: “The employee in question is on leave while we complete our investigation. We do not tolerate hate speech of any kind.”
JOHN ANTHONY PROVENZANO/UTISM_
Prior to being deactivated in October, the account utism_ (screen name Bullzeye) had around 70,000 followers and regularly posted pro-Nazi, pro-Hitler, and antisemitic content.
Based on memory.lol (a tool developed by Travis Brown that tracks changes to X accounts), the account appears to be the second or third account created by the same user after prior accounts with the username JohnnyBullzeye were suspended.
[…] In the course of investigating Provenzano’s background, the Observer received a tip that Provenzano had taken a civilian job at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Indian Head, Maryland, about an hour away from Arlington. When asked about Provenzano’s employment and apparent posts on X, a public affairs officer at the Naval Surface Warfare Center at Indian Head provided the following statement: “The Navy has a zero-tolerance policy for extremist conduct and takes all allegations of personnel involvement in extremist groups seriously. These allegations are under investigation. It would be inappropriate to comment further at this time.”
SCOTUS Took Dim View Of Transgender Rights
The Supreme Court’s oral arguments Wednesday over Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors, while not definitive, did not bode well for transgender rights or faithful adherence to the high court’s own equal protection jurisprudence, as TPM’s Kate Riga reported:
– In Trans Case, Right-Wing Justices Mull Tossing Constitutional Protections In Favor Of Feigned Helplessness
– Right-Wing Justices Eager To Assert That Trans Case Has Nothing To Do With 2020 LGBTQ Win
Justice Neil Gorsuch, who was the unexpected author of the majority opinion in an important 2020 transgender rights cases, was conspicuously silent in yesterday’s arguments.
Link. The SCOTUS news above is one of several bits and pieces of news presented at the the link.
“Ex-staffers, GOP Senate aides, and members of the intelligence community are raising concerns about Trump’s pick to lead the U.S. Intelligence Community”
That’s a Rolling Stone link. You have to sign in with an email in order to read the report.
On Wednesday, Donald Trump nominated former Rep. Billy Long to chair the Internal Revenue Service, a Missouri Republican who tried to abolish the tax-collecting agency while serving in Congress.
Long was a cosponsor of the Fair Tax Act, a bill that would abolish income taxes and instead implement a whopping 23% sales tax—a regressive tax that the Tax Policy Center said would lead to a tax increase on the middle class and a massive cut for the wealthiest Americans. [!!!] The bill Long co-sponsored also sought to repeal the 16th Amendment to the Constitution, which gives Congress the power to create and collect income taxes, and ultimately would abolish the IRS entirely.
The bill Long cosponsored tracks with the goals of Project 2025, the right-wing roadmap for Trump’s second term. Like the Fair Tax Act, Project 2025 calls for replacing individual and corporate income taxes with a consumption tax, which the Center for American Progress said would lead to a “$5,900 tax increase for the middle 20% of households and an average $2 million tax cut for the top 0.1%.”
Long also was the cosponsor of a bill that would repeal the estate tax, which only kicks in for people who inherit more than $13.6 million—amounting to yet another giveaway to the mega rich.
Since leaving Congress in 2023, Long has been serving as a tax adviser to businesses, and has encouraged them to use a pandemic-era Employee Retention Tax Credit that’s cost the government billions more than anticipated due to it being rife with fraud.
Trump touted this work as a reason why he chose Long to lead the IRS.
“Since leaving Congress, Billy has worked as a Business and Tax advisor, helping Small Businesses navigate the complexities of complying with the IRS Rules and Regulations,” Trump said in a Truth Social post. “I have known Billy since 2011 – He is an extremely hard worker, and respected by all, especially by those who know him in Congress. Taxpayers and the wonderful employees of the IRS will love having Billy at the helm. He is the consummate ‘people person,’ well respected on both sides of the aisle.”
Democratic senators are already concerned about Long’s work helping businesses scam the government.
[…] In order to get Long confirmed, he has to fire current IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel, whose term expires in November 2027.
The New York Times reported that Werfel has no intention of leaving his post, saying that he told a podcast in November: “I have a vision of my last day on the job being Nov. 12, 2027. My frame of mind on the IRS is that it’s nonpartisan […]
Joe Scarborough, cohost of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” went on an extended rant on Thursday morning, defending himself and cohost Mika Brzezinski (the pair are married) after they were widely criticized for a post-election trip to Mar-a-Lago to visit Donald Trump.
“You can say he had fascist rhetoric and still go in and talk to him, you know why I do that? To get the read of the man,” Scarborough said, with clear anger showing. [video at the link]
[…] Scarborough and Brzezinski compared themselves to journalists at outlets like The Washington Post and The New York Times, who often speak to leaders like Trump on background. But the pair are the hosts of an opinion news program.
Over the years, Scarborough, a former Republican congressman, has openly offered his opinion on a host of issues and has more in common with an opinion columnist than a straight news reporter. During the 2016 campaign cycle, this took the form of Trump being relentlessly promoted on “Morning Joe.”
The rant—which went on for an extraordinarily long time—was triggered by a column published in The Atlantic by former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum. In his piece Frum discussed his appearance on “Morning Joe” on Thursday, where he joked about the allegations of public drunkenness by Defense Secretary nominee and former Fox News host Pete Hegseth.
[…] Scarborough was dismissive of Frum’s perspective and argued that the warning [to Frum] was more about civility than censorship, before launching into his comments about criticism of the show.
The MSNBC show is part of a trend of media outlets—including The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times—bending over backward to please Trump, even before he has been sworn into office. Despite Scarborough’s protests the Trump visit showed deference to a figure who has been openly hostile to the free press and the network’s skittishness about Trump-related criticism is likely to decrease trust in the press.
Most of the other programs on MSNBC are not following in Scarborough’s footsteps, thank goodness.
You have three days left, if you got suckered in by those omnipresent ads for Medicare Advantage and left regular Medicare for the siren song of cheaper coverage, “free” vision, hearing, or dental, or even “free” money to buy groceries or rides to the doc. [“Omnipresent” is an accurate description. When there is that much money being spent on excessive advertising … raises all kinds of red flags.]
The open enrollment period for real Medicare closes at the end of the day Saturday, December 7th; after that, you’re locked into the Medicare Advantage plan you may have bought until next year.
[…] Companies are required to write a Medigap policy for you at a reasonable price when you turn 65, no matter how sick you are or what preexisting conditions you may have, but if you’ve been “off Medicare” by being on Medicare Advantage for more than a year, they don’t have to write you a policy, so double-check that and sign up for a Medigap policy before making the switch back to real Medicare.
So, what’s this all about and why is it so complicated?
When George W. Bush and congressional Republicans (and a handful of bought-off Democrats) created Medicare Advantage in 2003, it was the fulfillment of half of Bush’s goal of privatizing Social Security and Medicare, dating all the way back to his unsuccessful run for Congress in 1978 and a main theme of his second term in office.
Medicare Advantage is not Medicare. These plans are private health insurance provided by private corporations, who are then reimbursed at a fixed rate by the Medicare trust fund regardless of how much their customers use their insurance. Thus, the more they can screw their customers and us taxpayers by withholding healthcare payments, the more money they make
With real Medicare, if your doctor says you need a test, procedure, scan, or any other medical intervention you simply get it done and real Medicare pays the bill. No muss, no fuss, no permission needed. Real Medicare always pays, and if they think something’s not kosher, they follow up after the payment’s been made so as not to slow down the delivery of your healthcare. [Not quite that simple. Some providers charge more than Medicare allows, and in that case the patient may end up paying the difference to the provider. Deductible also apply with Medicare Plan B.)
With Medicare Advantage, however, you’re subject to “pre-clearance,” meaning that the insurance company inserts itself between you and your doctor: You can’t get the medical help you need until or unless the insurance company pre-clears you for payment.
These companies thus make much of their billions in profit by routinely denying claims — 1.5 million, or 18 percent of all claims, were turned down in one year alone — leaving Advantage policy holders with the horrible choice of not getting the tests or procedures they need or paying for them out-of-pocket.
Given this, you’d think that most people would stay as far away from these private Medicare Advantage plans as they could. But Congress also authorized these plans to compete unfairly with real Medicare by offering things real Medicare can’t (yet). These include free or discounted dental, hearing, eyeglasses, gym memberships, groceries, rides to the doctor, and even cash rebates.
You and I pay for those freebies, but that’s only half of the horror story.
This year, as Matthew Cunningham-Cook pointed out in Wendell Potter’s brilliant Health Care un-covered Substack newsletter, we’re ponying up an additional $64 billion to give to these private insurance companies to “reimburse” them for the freebies they relentlessly advertise on television, online, and in print.
And here’s the most obscene part of the whole thing: the companies won’t tell the government (us!) how much of that $64 billion they’ve actually spent. They just take the money and say, “Thank you very much.” And then, presumably, throw a few extra million into the pockets of each of their already obscenely-well-paid senior executives.
For example, the former CEO of the nation’s largest Medicare Advantage provider, UnitedHealth, walked away with over a billion dollars in total compensation. With a “B.” One guy. His successor made off with over a half-billion dollars in pay and stock.
Good work if you can get it: all you need do is buy off a hundred or so members of Congress, courtesy of Clarence Thomas’ billionaire-funded tie-breaking vote on Citizens United, and threaten the rest of Congress with massive advertising campaigns for their opponents if they try to stop you.
And while the companies refuse to tell us how much of the $64 billion that we’re throwing at them this year to offer “free” dental, etc. is actually used, what we do know is that most of that money is not going to pay for the freebies they advertise. As Cunningham-Cook noted, in one study only 11 percent of Advantage policyholders who’d signed up with plans offering dental care used that benefit.
[…] And now it looks like things are about to get a whole lot worse.
When he was president last time, Donald Trump substantially expanded Medicare Advantage, calling real Medicare “socialism.” Project 2025 and candidate Trump both promised to end real Medicare “immediately” if Trump was re-elected; at the very least, they’ll make Medicare Advantage the “default” program people are steered into when they turn 65 and sign up for Medicare.
These giant insurance companies ripped off us taxpayers last year to the tune of an estimated $140 billion over and above what it would’ve cost us if people had simply been on real Medicare, according to a report from Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP).
If there was no Medicare Advantage scam bleeding off all that cash to pay for executives’ private jets, real Medicare could be expanded to cover dental, vision, and hearing and even end the need for Medigap plans.
But for now, the privatization gravy train continues to roll along. The insurance giants use some of that money to buy legislators, and some of it for expensive advertising to dupe seniors into joining their programs. The company (Benefytt) that hired Joe Namath to pitch Medicare Advantage, for example, was recently hit with huge fines by the Federal Trade Commission for deceptive advertising.
The FTC news release laid it out:
“Benefytt pocketed millions selling sham insurance to seniors and other consumers looking for health coverage,” said Samuel Levine, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. “The company is being ordered to pay $100 million, and we’re holding its executives accountable for this fraud.”
[…] Nonetheless, the Centers for Medicare Services continues to let Benefytt and Namath market these products: welcome to the power of organized money.
[…] Medicare Advantage plans are massive cash cows for the companies that run them. As Cigna prepares for a merger, for example, they’re being forced to sell off their Medicare Advantage division: it’s scheduled to go for $3.7 billion. Nobody pays that kind of money unless they expect enormous returns.
And how do they make those billions?
Most Medicare Advantage companies regularly do everything they can to intimidate you into paying yourself out-of-pocket. Often, they simply refuse payment and wait for you to file a complaint against them; for people seriously ill the cumbersome “appeals” process is often more than they can handle so they just write a check, pull out a credit card, or end up deeply in debt in their golden years.
As a result, hospitals and doctor groups across the nation are beginning to refuse to take Medicare Advantage patients. And in rural areas many hospitals are simply going out of business because Medicare advantage providers refuse to pay their bills.
[snipped some details of how the state of California is trying to address the problem]
[…] the Mayo Clinic has warned its customers in Florida and Arizona that they won’t accept Medicare Advantage any more […]
Traditional Medicare has been serving Americans well since 1965: it’s one of the most efficient single-payer systems to fund healthcare that’s ever been devised. But nobody was making a buck off it, so nobody could share those profits with greedy politicians. Enter Medicare Advantage, courtesy of George W. Bush and the GOP.
While several bills have been offered in Congress to do something about this — including Mark Pocan’s and Ro Khanna’s Save Medicare Act that would end these companies’ ability to use the word “Medicare” in their policy names and advertising — the amounts of money sloshing around DC in the healthcare space now are almost unfathomable.
[…] five corrupt Republicans on the US Supreme Court legalizing political bribery with Citizens United have screwed average Americans and made a handful of industry executives and investors fabulously rich.
[…] since the last three years of life are typically the most expensive years for healthcare, the insurance denials are more likely to happen then — long after the person’s signed up with the Advantage company and it’s too late to go back to real Medicare.
[…] The New York Times did an exposé of the problem in an article titled “Medicare Advantage Plans Often Deny Needed Care, Federal Report Finds.” It tells the story of “Kurt Pauker, an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor in Indianapolis” who’d bought an Advantage policy from Humana:
“In spite of recommendations from Mr. Pauker’s doctors, his family said, Humana has repeatedly denied authorization for inpatient rehabilitation after hospitalization, saying at times he was too healthy and at times too ill to benefit.”
[…] If you have “real” Medicare with a heavily regulated Medigap policy to cover the 20% Medicare doesn’t, you never have to worry.
Your bills get paid, you can use any doctor or hospital in the country who takes Medicare, and neither Medicare nor your Medigap provider will ever try to collect from you or force you to pay for what you thought was covered.
Neither you or your doctor will ever have to do the “pre-authorization” dance with real Medicare: those terrible experiences dealing with for-profit insurance companies are part of the past.
But if you have Medicare Advantage — which is not Medicare, but private health insurance — you’re on your own.
[…] Enough is enough. Let your members of Congress know it’s beyond time to fix the Court and Medicare, so scams like Medicare Advantage can no longer rip off America’s seniors while making industry executives richer than Midas.
And if you got hooked into switching out of real Medicare and now find yourself in a Medicare Advantage plan, you have three days to back out and return to real Medicare. For more information, you can also contact the nonprofit and real-Medicare-supporting Medicare Rights Center at 800-333-4114.
Kash Patel Will Sue Olivia Troye For Being Mean To Him On MSNBC
One thing about Donald Trump’s unfit, unqualified nominee for FBI director Kash Patel — Trump’s nominee to replace Trump’s original FBI Director Chris Wray, who’s serving a 10-year term that is not supposed to be cut short at anyone’s whim […] — is that he’s clearly excited to show us just how stupid, dangerous, and dangerously stupid things could be if he were put in charge. He’s very excited about himself like that, like a toddler with a poo.
Olivia Troye, she is one of those never-Trumpers who worked in the Trump administration, on national security issues, and for Vice President Mike Pence. As such, she served when Patel was bumblefucking from place to place during the last Trump administration.
Troye went on MSNBC the other day and said some mean besmirch statements about Kash Patel. And he is SUING! Or at least his lawyer Jesse Binnall is threatening that, if Troye doesn’t take it back.
Troye tweeted the letter she received from Team K$H, which is a nickname he totally wants people to use, because of how it is very cool: [Troye’s social media post featuring the letter is available at the link.]
She explained:
Today, Kash Patel sent a letter to my counsel @MarkSZaidEsq – threatening legal action & demanding that I retract my comments on MSNBC about his unfitness to serve as FBI Director. This aligns with his threats against the media & political opponents, revealing how he might conduct himself if confirmed in the role. I stand by my statements—my priority remains the safety & security of the American people. I am not the only one who has expressed concerns about him. So why me? And so it begins.
It’s weird, because Troye’s name isn’t even written in Kash’s super-angry “I hate this school and everybody who goes to it!” burn book.
In the letter, Patel, through Binnall, whined:
On December 2, 2024, you appeared as a live guest on MSNBC and made several false and defamatory statements about Mr. Patel. These comments include that Mr. Patel would “lie about intelligence” and would “lie about making things up on operations” to the point where Mr. Patel “put the lives of Navy Seals at risk when it came to Nigeria,” and that Mr. Patel was even misinforming Vice President Mike Pence.
Well, reckon Troye would know.
Elaina Calabro reports the story of Kash putting Navy SEAL Team 6 in danger in West Africa in The Atlantic; it’s a horrifying example of why he shouldn’t be in charge of walking your dog. He of course denies it, as you can see in the yappy lawyer letter.
Patel demands Troye retract her besmirch statements within five days on Twitter, OR ELSE. Take it back! Take it back!
“Unless this step is taken, Mr. Patel will take swift legal action to uphold his rights and reputation,” writes Binnall, leading most in-the-know observers to most likely ask “LOL what reputation?”
This is the man who wants to be the actual human being in charge of the FBI. A woman said mean things about him on TV and this thin-skinned loser-baby wants to sue.
As Troye said about it on CNN:
… Troye warned that Patel’s threat was a “sign of what’s to come should he become director of the FBI and how he is going to conduct himself.”
“We should take him at his word,” Troye said, adding that the move was a “signal to others as he goes into the confirmation process in terms of telling the truth about his background.”
We wish we thought Republican senators were serious enough about being good stewards of the government that something like this — or literally anything else Kash Patel has ever done or said — would be immediately disqualifying.
Followup to comments 93 (me) and 117 (CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain).
[…] Yesterday, UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson was fatally shot in broad daylight. I wouldn’t say that people were necessarily happy that he was murdered (okay, maybe some people were happy), but I would say that a fairly large number of them were conspicuously not sad about it. Certainly, no one was really straining to imagine what the motive could possibly be. After all, while all health insurance companies are pretty evil, UnitedHealth bears the distinction of being the health insurance company most likely to deny claims. [chart available at the link showing claim denial rates by insurance company]
Thompson was one of the highest paid executives in the business, with compensation totaling over $10 million a year. His net worth was estimated to be somewhere around $42.9 million. […]
Thompson was also under investigation by the Department of Justice for insider trading, as he and UnitedHealth Group chairman Stephen Helmsley, Chief People Officer Erin McSweeney, and Chief Accounting Officer Tom Roos sold a combined $101 million in stocks just prior to the company being investigated for violating antitrust laws. He was also sued for this by a firefighter’s pension fund earlier this year.
Here is just a small selection of the responses on TikTok to an ABC News video on the shooting:
“My thought and prayers are unfortunately out of network.”
“Claims for thoughts and prayers are denied at this time…. Hospital he was taken to is not in network and ambulance will not covered due to no prior referral.” [more examples at the link]
Those are just the comments from one article. There are about a thousand (million?) other responses on social media saying more or less the same things. It’s not because people are cruel and uncaring so much as they are hurt and they are angry. They are furious — fairly — at a system where this motherfucker is raking in $10.2 million a year to run a company that puts people in debt for getting sick.
I’m sorry, but it’s true. It’s obvious! If we weren’t getting totally fucked over in this system, Brian Thompson would not have been making $10 million a year, because all of that $10 million would have gone towards paying for people’s health care. Health insurance companies draw a profit by taking your money and not giving it back to you when you need it. That is the whole system! That is how it works! [Yep. It’s a scam. See also comment 141.]
It’s become increasingly clear that people were correct in assuming that the motive had something to do with the shooter or someone they love being denied care. Words like “deny,” “delay,” “defend,” and “depose” were reportedly written on the bullets — a clear reference to the ways insurance companies try to get out of paying claims. […]
I’d like you all to take a moment and go back in time with me to 2020, when all of the sneering pundits who considered themselves the “adults in the room” demanded to know how Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders expected to pay for their Medicare for All plans. And I’m going to tell you that Elizabeth Warren’s plan was estimated to cost $20 trillion over the next decade and Bernie Sanders’ plan (in which all healthcare would be free at the point of service) would have cost $32 trillion. Then, I’m going to tell you that, in 2023, Americans spent, in total, $4.8 trillion on healthcare. […]
I’m also going to point out that one of the biggest benefits of Medicare for All is that not is there no need for $10 or so million be carved out to pay CEOs like Brian Thompson (each), but that no one needs to pay anyone to figure out how not to give people their money back, either!
[…] People often get the worst news of their life accompanied by the news that it will also financially devastate them or their family.
A search for “UnitedHealth cancer” on GoFundMe turned up myriad pleas from desperate people who had been told their chemo meds were not covered, or that their doctor or hospital had recently become “out of network,” or that they had to pay an extremely high deductible before they could get any coverage.
It’s not just UnitedHealth that is appalling, of course. This week, Anthem BlueCross BlueShield announced that — and I am not making this up — they will not cover anesthesia past a certain time. This means that if something goes wrong with your surgery or the doctors just need a little bit more time for you than for someone else, for whatever reason, than the insurance company itself has deemed necessary for your operation, they will not pay for your anesthesia. This means that your options would be to pay a whole lot of money for anesthesia or to, I guess, have your anesthesia cut-off mid-operation — the latter of which, I would imagine, would make for a lot of deeply unpleasant open-heart surgeries.
It takes a lot, I think, for people to break the “don’t speak ill of the dead” taboo — so while killing is never justified, it’s certainly worth considering that things must be pretty goddamned bad out there for people to feel this way, to be pushed that far. That needs to be taken more seriously.
It’s nice to think that we have a social safety net because we genuinely care about people, and for many of us that’s true. But the fact is, there is a reason why the most famous fictional account of the French Revolution was titled Les Miserables — and it is, in part, because people only have so much of a threshold for misery before the unreasonable starts to sound reasonable. We have a social safety net in order to keep things from getting to the point of guillotines.
As much as people like to roll their eyes and accuse those of us who believe that healthcare is a human right of being naïve and idealistic, the true naïve idealists out there are the ones who actually believe that this can go on forever without consequence.
“The National Weather Service issued the warning for Northern California and parts of Southern Oregon after the quake was detected off the coast of Ferndale, California.”
An earthquake ruptured off California’s coast on Thursday morning, triggering a tsunami warning for the coast of northern California and southern Oregon.
The earthquake, a magnitude-7.0 temblor, rumbled at about 10:44 a.m., according to the United States Geological Survey. It was relatively shallow and ruptured about 6 miles beneath the Earth’s surface.
Another earthquake — which was measured at magnitude 5.8 — was reported just a few minutes later near Cobb, California, according to the agency.
The tsunami warning extends from Davenport, California to the border between Douglas and Lane Counties in Oregon. […]
“A senior commander told NBC News that tanks had been used during the incursion and that rebels had freed hundreds of prisoners.”
Rebel forces entered the Syrian city of Hama and forced out government troops Thursday, in a development that may have significant consequences in the country’s 14-year-long civil war.
Both the Syrian Defense Ministry and an official from the militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, known as HTS, said that insurgents had gained access to the country’s fourth-biggest city and that despite fierce fighting, the troops of the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had left the city.
Hassan Abdul-Ghani, senior commander of the HTS-led forces, told NBC News that tanks had been used during the incursion and that fighters had “entered the Hama Central Prison and freed hundreds of unjustly imprisoned individuals.”
In a statement posted on Facebook, the Syrian Defense Ministry said that rebel groups “managed to penetrate several positions within the city and enter it,” and that “to safeguard the lives of the civilian population in Hama and to avoid involving them in urban combat, the military units stationed there have redeployed and repositioned outside the city.” [Sounds like an excuse for failure.]
[…] “It was really surprising that they managed to make it into Aleppo,” said Samuel Ramani, an associate fellow at the London-based Royal United Services Institute think tank. “This is certainly beyond anyone’s expectations — Hama’s a critical logistical area between Aleppo and Damascus.”
The taking the city of Hama by HTS-led forces could prove pivotal in shifting the balance of the civil war. The city has never before been in rebel hands and has been the site of more than one bloody crackdown by both Assad’s regime and that of his father, Hafez al-Assad.
“It’s a huge humiliation for Assad and it comes at a time when he was confident in his long-term position, focusing on doing a deal with the Trump administration and guarding from spillovers from the Gaza and Lebanon wars — neither Damascus nor Moscow expected a second Syrian civil war,” added Ramani, who is also an international relations lecturer at the University of Oxford.
[…] Despite Moscow’s depleted presence, a return to the heavy Russian-led bombing of civilian infrastructure not seen since 2018 looks likely, according to Ramani from RUSI.
“It’s really unclear what’s next for the Assad government and how they turn back the tide. The Russians have said they’re all in on Assad but they’ve redeployed jets and air defenses to Ukraine,” said he said. “It doesn’t mean that Damascus is going to fall but it also doesn’t mean Assad will be able to restore authoritarian stability any time soon.”
More details, and photos are available at the link.
Congressional Republicans aren’t altogether sure how or when to extend the party’s 2017 package of tax breaks, but there is no doubt that this is at the top of the GOP’s priority list for the next Congress. Among the challenges facing the party, however, is how to pay for more tax cuts — or whether to even try.
In case anyone’s forgotten, when Donald Trump and his allies championed massive tax giveaways to the wealthy and big corporations in 2017, among the Republicans’ key arguments is that they didn’t have to offset the costs of the cuts. Party officials instead argued, with great sincerity, that tax breaks for the wealthy and big corporations would magically pay for themselves through increased growth.
The bizarre claim has been thoroughly and repeatedly discredited, but too many GOP officials who really ought to know better continue to cling to the fiction. Politico reported last week, for example:
Some lawmakers are going off-menu with their own dynamic analyses. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), another tax writer, says he believes the [2017 law] generated so much economic activity that it almost entirely paid for itself, even if that’s hardly what official forecasts said. So, he says, if they merely extend that law, it will be mostly paid for too. “That’s oftentimes not appreciated,” he said.
It’s “oftentimes not appreciated” because the underlying claim has no basis in reality. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities explained in a report published over the summer, when it comes to fiscal responsibility, the GOP’s 2017 package of tax cuts was wildly irresponsible.
When looking for explanations as to why Trump, in his first term, added nearly $8 trillion to the national debt — much of which happened before the pandemic in 2020 — the tax breaks he signed into law are the obvious and accurate answer.
It’s against this backdrop that the Congressional Budget Office examined the impact of extending the GOP’s tax policies, and as The Washington Post reported, the price tag was enormous.
The price tag for extending the tax cuts continues to grow, according to nonpartisan congressional bookkeepers. … Extending the tax cuts would add more than $4 trillion to the national debt over the next 10 years, a massive sum that could spook foreign investors and increase borrowing costs.
The article added that some GOP lawmakers are exploring ways to offset some of the costs, in part by way of “changes to Medicaid,” among other ideas.
I can see the 2026 campaign ads now: Republicans undermined health care benefits for low-income families because they wanted to pass tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires.
[…] Boyle [Rep. Brendan Boyle of Pennsylvania] added, “Adding $4.6 trillion to the deficit isn’t just reckless — it’s a direct attack on the hardworking families Republicans claim to represent. … The hypocrisy is breathtaking. Republicans lecture us about fiscal responsibility when it comes to helping working families, but they have no problem blowing up the deficit to reward the wealthy and well-connected.”
Reginald Selkirksays
@143 Lynna, OM
Kash Patel Will Sue Olivia Troye For Being Mean To Him On MSNBC
The whereabouts and activities of Seal Team Six seem to be at the center of this. Which means that any evidence necessary to make such a case is probably classified.
A nun is among 24 people arrested in northern Italy in connection with a mafia investigation, Italian police have said.
The nun, named in Italian press as Sister Anna Donelli, was arrested for allegedly acting as a go-between for the ‘Ndrangheta mafia and its jailed gang members.
Police also arrested two politicians and seized more than €1.8m (£1.5m) worth of assets in raids across several towns in the Lombardy and Veneto regions, as well as Calabria in the south…
Statements released by the coalition of law enforcement agencies behind the sting detail allegations that the nun leveraged her position as a volunteer at the prison.
The Brescia Carabinieri said she was an unsuspecting figure, whose religious role allowed her “free access to the penitentiary facilities”…
Canada’s new WNBA franchise will be called the Toronto Tempo, a handle officially unveiled with some haste Thursday morning after it was leaked the previous day…
The logo shows a light-blue basketball emblazoned with a T and leaving a trail, as if in motion. Resch said the team colours will be blue and red, calling it “a modern take on a very familiar Canadian colour palate.” …
The women’s league will grow to 13 teams in 2025 with the addition of the Golden State Valkyries. Toronto and Portland join the party in 2026…
The WNBA team will primarily play out of the 8,700-seat Coca-Cola Coliseum, home to the AHL Marlies, with the 19,800-seat Scotiabank Arena also an option. But Tanenbaum has said the team will play home games elsewhere in Canada, to help showcase the WNBA and help grow women’s basketball…
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch will not participate in an environmental case to be argued next week involving a proposed railway in Utah, the court said on Wednesday, a move that followed a call by some Democratic lawmakers for him to recuse over a possible conflict of interest.
The one-paragraph announcement made public by a court official came in a letter addressed to lawyers in the case due to be argued next Tuesday. The other eight justices will hear and decide the case.
Gorsuch decided to withdraw from participating in the case consistent with the code of conduct adopted by the court last year, the statement said, but provided no further explanation.
U.S. congressman Hank Johnson and 12 other Democratic lawmakers sent a letter to Gorsuch on Nov. 21 urging his withdrawal because businessman Philip Anschutz, a former legal client of the justice, has “a direct financial interest in the outcome” of the case. The lawmakers said that the Anschutz Exploration Corporation and other companies tied to the businessman could be affected by the case…
A top car manufacturing company is developing a new type of paint that could generate electricity. Mercedes-Benz’s engineers believe that their solar paint could revolutionize electric vehicles.
The new PV coating will consist of innovative solar modules, which will be applied to the car body in a way similar to a wafer-thin paste.
The 5 micrometers thick paint, which is thinner than a human hair, could cover an area of 11 square meters. Mercedes-Benz claims the paint could generate enough energy to power a vehicle for up to 7,456 miles (12,000 kilometers) annually under ideal conditions…
Smartmatic won’t be required to give Fox News a trove of information about U.S. federal charges against the voting machine company’s co-founder over alleged bribery in the Philippines, a judge ruled Thursday.
Fox News and parent Fox Corp. sought the information to help fight Smartmatic’s $2.7 billion defamation suit over broadcasts about the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Smartmatic says its business was gutted when Fox aired false claims that the election-tech company helped rig the voting.
Fox says it was simply reporting on newsworthy allegations made by then-President Donald Trump and his allies.
At the same hearing, Judge David B. Cohen also turned down Smartmatic’s request to question two Fox Corp. board members. The company has already questioned others.
The Aug. 8 indictment of Smartmatic co-founder Roger Piñate and two other executives concerns a geographically distant matter: Smartmatic’s efforts to get work in the Philippines between 2015 and 2018.
But Fox maintains the criminal case is pertinent to Smartmatic’s business prospects, and therefore to the election-tech company’s claims about what it lost and stands to lose because of Fox’s 2020 coverage…
StevoRsays
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has denounced a suspicious blaze that tore through a Melbourne synagogue as a violent act of anti-Semitism aimed at creating fear in the community. Fire crews were called to the Adass Israel synagogue at Ripponlea in Melbourne’s south-east shortly after 4am and found the building fully involved in fire. Witnesses inside the synagogue reported seeing two masked men throw fuel inside the premises, before setting it alight.
The Justice Department released the results of its investigation into the Memphis Police Department on Wednesday, finding that it had used excessive force, treated Black people more harshly than white people and mistreated those with mental health issues. The report said that the civil rights violations had a “‘corrosive effect.”
Donald Trump is set to receive the no-one-has-ever-heard-of-it “Patriot of the Year” award from Fox Nation on Thursday night. The Patriot Awards will be hosted by Trump buddy Sean Hannity.
The event was originally supposed to be hosted by Fox News weekend host Pete Hegseth … but he’s busy trying his darndest not to answer hard questions about his past. Busy for now, at least.
“I will be receiving the Fox Patriot of the Year Award—so nice! See you there,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
This shiny new piece of trash will sit nicely in Trump’s various property bathrooms, where he used to store confidential documents, and alongside other so-called awards Trump has received.
In this election cycle, Trump was given a Purple Heart by a military veteran in Georgia. His acceptance of the unearned award was widely criticized by veterans since the Purple Heart is a recognition of military members who are wounded or killed while serving. Worse, Trump’s military service consisted of allegedly dodging the draft to serve under Sgt. Major Dr. Scholl.
Trump also has two honorary doctorates from Liberty University, which is sort of like having two doctorates … from Liberty University. It makes sense seeing as that school has a history of allegedly protecting sexual abusers and profiting off of COVID-19.
In January 2023, Trump announced that he had won his own Senior Club Championship at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida. It was a preposterous fantastical feat for someone who reportedly missed the first round of play.
Then there were half a dozen GOP House members who attempted to get Trump a Congressional Gold Medal. Like most of the moves by House Republicans, the move went nowhere fast. […]
Former Richard Nixon aide and Fox News personality Monica Crowley has been tapped by Donald Trump to be the United States’ next ambassador, assistant secretary of state, and chief of protocol.
Crowley becomes the latest Fox News contributor/host, joining questionable picks such as Sean Duffy, Tulsi Gabbard, Sebastian Gorka, Pete Hegseth, Thomas Homan, Mike Huckabee, Keith Kellogg, Martin Makary, Janette Nesheiwat, Michael Waltz, and Vivek Ramaswamy in the next administration.
During Trump’s first time in office, Crowley was tapped to be his senior director of strategic communications at the National Security Council, but passed on the post after reports surfaced that her 2012 book “What the (Bleep) Just Happened” and her 2000 dissertation were filled with dozens of instances of plagiarism.
Subsequently, Crowley registered as a foreign agent to lobby for Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk, before landing back in the first Trump administration as a spokeswoman under then-Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.
Crowley’s right-wing Fox News bonafides come in the form of old-school racist birtherism. During President Barack Obama’s tenure in office, Crowley promoted various conspiracy theories connected to the legitimacy of the president’s birth certificate, his religious affiliations, and a belief that Obama was working to create “Sharia Law,” in the United States. Still waiting for that to happen.
During the 2024 election cycle, Trump appeared on Crowley’s podcast to demand House Republicans shut down the government if they were unable to get the racist conspiracy theory-driven SAVE Act targeting pretend voter fraud passed.
Trump’s penchant for giving billionaires positions they should not have and his reliance on Fox News personalities to launder his propaganda has a long history. Now his administration is essentially being created out of only those two demographics.
“Uh Oh LOL, Is Tulsi Gabbard’s Nomination In Big Trouble Too?”
“Are we gonna have to send condolences to the Kremlin?”
[snipped details about Pete Hegseth, whose nomination is also in trouble.]
[…] a couple of stories have appeared the past couple days about the one Russian media calls their girlfriend.
It’s well known that there’s probably not a piece of propaganda that originated in the bowels of the Kremlin that Tulsi Gabbard wouldn’t spew, that she is unique among Americans in that she’s so keen on taking Vladimir Putin’s side. She’s not anti-war, she’s pro-dictator. Is that what we want in a director of national intelligence, a person who literally has access to all America’s intel? Could we possibly trust her with information like that?
New reporting from ABC News says that, according to former Gabbard aides, it’s not that she’s actually compromised by Russia (that they know of), but more that she’s just a real fucking idiot when it comes to discerning the difference between good information and bad information.
And again, we ask: is that what we want in a director of national intelligence, a person who literally has access to all America’s intel? Could we possibly trust her with information like that?
ABC News talked to three former Gabbard advisers who say she reads, or used to read, a whooooole lot of RT, as in the state-run Russian news source that used to be called Russia Today, as in “the Kremlin’s principal international propaganda outlet,” according to the US intelligence community that she’s been nominated to lead.
Apparently she thinks/thought it was real news. Moron!
Is she still doing this? We don’t know. […]
Gabbard’s former aides said she was trafficking in RT articles “long after” she was informed that RT is not the real news.
For a nice long recounting of all the Russian propaganda Gabbard spews, and has been spewing for years — especially her bonkers and evil views about Russia’s horrific war on Ukraine — ABC News has a nice rundown. They spoke to an intelligence expert who commented on how bad this is:
Doug London, a retired 34-year veteran intelligence officer, said Gabbard’s alleged penchant to rely at least in part on outlets like RT to shape her view of the world reflects poorly on her suitability to fulfill the responsibilities of a director of national intelligence.
“That Gabbard’s views mirror Russia’s narrative and disinformation themes can but suggest naïveté, collusion, or politically opportunistic sycophancy to echo whatever she believes Trump wants to hear,” London said, adding, “none of which bodes well for the president’s principal intelligence adviser responsible for enabling the [U.S. intelligence community] to inform decision-making by telling it like it is.”
[…] meanwhile, The Hill is reporting that Gabbard’s nomination might already, low-key, be the most difficult one to get through the Senate, because, like, a number of Republican senators actually do think she’s a Russian asset.
“I think Gabbard, out of the three, still has the toughest path,” one Senate GOP aide told The Hill. “[She] is the most at risk.” […]
Some members of [the defense hawk/Ukraine supporter Republican] crowd remain skeptical of Gabbard especially due to her past remarks about the Ukraine war that were sympathetic to Moscow and echoed by Russian state media — which has also praised her selection. […]
“Behind closed doors, people think she might be compromised. Like it’s not hyperbole,” the aide continued. “There are members of our conference who think she’s a [Russian] asset.”
Huh.
Plus there are all those questions about why she’s always seemed to be up Assad’s ass in Syria […]
“Gun to my head, Gabbard is probably the toughest,” a second Senate GOP aide said, noting the Syria questions and her status as a lifelong Democrat [more like a lifelong whacko doofus] top the list of worries for lawmakers.
“Those are real concerns members have,” the aide added.
We have only begun to scratch the surface of the failures that will be listed next to Donald Trump’s name in his lame-duck second term. […]
“The super PAC, which defended Trump on abortion, got its more than $20 million from the ‘Elon Musk Revocable Trust.’ ”
Billionaire Elon Musk poured more than $20 million into a mysterious super PAC at the end of the 2024 campaign, part of more than $250 million he spent overall to boost President-elect Donald Trump, new campaign finance reports show.
Musk financed RBG PAC, according to the report the group filed Thursday night with the Federal Election Commission. The super PAC, which did not disclose its donors before the election, launched ads contending that Trump did not support a federal abortion ban.
All of the money the group pulled in — $20.5 million — came from a single donation from the Elon Musk Revocable Trust in Austin, Texas. RBG PAC spent almost all of its money on digital ads, mailers and text messages, according to the campaign finance report, which covered Oct. 17 through Nov. 25.
The group’s website says Trump and the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg agree on the abortion issue, drawing criticism from Ginsburg’s granddaughter Clara Spara, who told The New York Times that the message was “nothing short of appalling.”
Trump took credit for the Supreme Court’s overturning Roe v. Wade, a decision that came after three Trump-appointed justices voted with the majority to overturn the national right to an abortion. (One of those justices, Amy Coney Barrett, was appointed to replace Ginsburg weeks before the 2020 election, after Ginsburg died in mid-September.) As president, he supported a federal ban on abortion after 20 weeks.
But during this campaign, Trump backed away from that position and instead declared that he supported states’ rights to decide abortion laws. Democrats still hit Trump hard on his past positions to argue that if he were elected, he and a Republican Congress would restrict abortion nationwide.
The late ad blitz from RBG PAC is only a small fraction of Musk’s total election spending this year: He also financed America PAC, a super PAC that reported spending $157 million supporting Trump in the presidential race.
America PAC’s latest campaign finance report showed Musk donated $238 million to the group throughout the election cycle, including in-kind contributions. And $120 million of that came in the final weeks of the race alone.
Federal disclosures show America PAC spent heavily on canvassing, text message-based get-out-the-vote efforts, printing and postage (most likely for direct mail), as well as digital advertising. It also ran a controversial cash giveaway that gave out $1 million each day to someone who signed the group’s conservative-leaning petition.
Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner sued Musk and America PAC in late October trying to halt the giveaway, but a judge in the state did not agree to stop the program. The Justice Department also warned the PAC around the same time that the giveaway might be illegal, but it has taken no public action on it.
America PAC’s campaign finance report lists each of the $1 million prizes as payments for a “spokesperson consultant.”
Musk also gave $3 million to the MAHA Alliance, a super PAC affiliated with Robert F. Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” push, in late October.
It’s possible that Musk donated more to pro-Trump efforts, too, as political committees continue to file fundraising reports pegged to Thursday night’s deadline. […]
Democrats forced votes to compel the Ethics Committee to release its report on former Rep. Gaetz, a top Trump ally. Republicans sent the matter back to the panel.
House lawmakers voted Thursday against releasing an Ethics Committee report on an exhaustive, yearslong investigation into former Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., a close ally and confidant of President-elect Donald Trump.
Democrats had forced the votes, and Republicans responded by voting to return the matter to the Ethics Committee, ending the fight over the report’s release for now. Whether it ever becomes public remains unknown.
Lawmakers voted shortly after the bipartisan Ethics Committee met privately — for a second time in as many months — about whether to make public the report on allegations that Gaetz engaged in illicit drug use and sexual misconduct with a 17-year-old girl and obstructed the House probe, among other claims.
But after 2½ hours, the committee panel did not release the report, saying in a statement that it is “continuing to discuss the matter.” Chairman Michael Guest, R-Miss., told reporters the committee would meet again before the end of the year.
[…] Before Thanksgiving, on Nov. 20, the 10-member Ethics Committee deadlocked over publishing the report into Gaetz, whom Trump announced as his pick to lead the Justice Department on Nov. 13, the day Gaetz resigned from Congress.
[…] Without movement from the Ethics Committee, the full House took action Thursday evening, putting all lawmakers on record. Two Democrats — Sean Casten, of Illinois, and Steve Cohen, of Tennessee — forced the votes, with resolutions focused on the Gaetz report.
Casten’s resolution would have directed the committee to release its report to the public, while Cohen’s resolution would have forced the committee to preserve and release records of its review of Gaetz. Because the resolutions were introduced as “privileged” Tuesday, they had to be voted on within two legislative days.
But Republicans thwarted the resolutions by voting to send them to the Ethics Committee. The House voted 206-198 to refer the Casten resolution to the committee; just one Republican, Tom McClintock, of California, sided with Democrats and voted no. […]
More at the link.
Looks like Republicans really, really do not want that report to become public.
Bekenstein Boundsays
I wonder how the Russkies got to Gabbard, of all people. Does she have a taste for underage boys?
KGsays
Guardian updates on political crises in France and South Korea. In both countries, an unpopular president is grappling with a national assembly where his supporters are in the minority. In both countries, the president has considerable powers (unlike, say, Germany or Ireland, where the presidency is a largely ceremonial post). In South Korea, it seems possible the assembly will vote to impeach the president (a 2/3 vote is required, which means some of the president’s own “Peoples’ Power” party would have to vote for it – the party leadership originally said it would vote against, but the leader is now saying the president must be suspended to prevent him taking further extreme actions); but as I understand it, the vote would need to be confirmed by at least six judges of the Constitutional Court, however that court is currently three members short of its bench of nine – I don’t know whether it can issue judgements. So the crisis is far from over. In France, so far there’s no expectation Macron will try anything as desperate as declaring a state of emergency/siege/exception (the differences between these are complicated), but there’s no obvious way out for him short of resignation, which he’s ruled out (but he would, wouldn’t he, until he does it). His recent prime minister, the right-wing former EU bureaucrat Michel Barnier, tried to govern by placating Le Pen’s fascists, but she helped bring him down, and any prime minister from the right would be obviously serving at her pleasure. The left alliance, the NFP, is demanding the appointment of a prime minister from their ranks, but although they are the largest block in the assembly, they are far short of a majority. With the far right already governing Italy, and a lame-duck German government facing an early election in February, which seems bound to result in advances for the fascist AfD and the “red-brown” BSW, the disintegration or at least complete paralysis of the EU looks increasingly likely.
KGsays
Bekenstein Bound@167,
Gabbard’s political positions are and have been all over the place. I’d guess her fondness for Putin may be secondary to her support for the Assad regime in Syria, which in turn derives from seeing him as an ally against political Islam. I doubt she’ll last long as director of national intelligence even if approved by the Senate – she’ll fall out with Trump over somethnig or other.
A Russian programmer defied the Federal Security Service (FSB) by publicizing the fact his phone was infected with spyware after being confiscated by authorities.
Kirill Parubets was detained in Russia for 15 days after being accused of sending money to Ukraine, during which time the man was beaten and subjected to aggressive efforts to recruit him as an FSB informant on his contacts in Ukraine.
According to his account of the story, published with his consent by Toronto University’s Citizen Lab and First Department legal organization, he says he was threatened with life imprisonment if he failed to comply with the recruitment drive.
In order to secure release, he agreed but before he was indoctrinated he and his wife fled the country. Always keep a second passport, if possible.
First Department’s account revealed that Parubets was working as a systems analyst in 2020, a job that didn’t require him to attend an office, so as a self-identifying ethnic Ukrainian, the Russian citizen decided to live in Kyiv.
After Russia’s invasion of the country in 2022, however, Russian citizens found it impossible to renew their residence permits so he and his wife Lyubov then attempted to obtain Moldovan and Romanian citizenship, but had to return to Russia to collect personal documents.
“There were no problems entering Russia,” said Parubets. “We arrived by car through Georgia, through Verkhniy Lars along the Black Sea and then we lived peacefully in Moscow. I was slowly collecting papers and continued working at the same time.”
Then on April 18 earlier this year, six masked men armed with machine guns stormed the Parubets’ home, ordered them to the floor, separated them into different rooms, and asked questions about the money transfers.
Kirill confirmed he was involved in charity work when living in Kyiv and that he did make transfers related to this work – an act Russia designated as treason shortly after its invasion began.
His Oukitel WP7 Android device was confiscated and he was forced to surrender the password before he and his wife were detained.
“Judging by how confidently they acted in the apartment, I got the impression that they had been there before, or there was wiretapping, because they knew what was where, what to look for and where,” he said. “They very quickly found a phone, a laptop, the most important documents related to Ukraine. In general, they knew where and what was there.”
After agreeing to work for the agency, the FSB returned his device at its Lubyanka headquarters but Russia’s finest didn’t do a great job of hiding their tracks. Parubets quickly noticed an odd-looking notification reading “Arm cortex vx3 synchronization,” which isn’t a typical message to receive.
“I picked up the code and saw that it was some kind of spy thing,” said Parubets. “I was very interested in information security and knew that there was such a spy module called Monokle. According to the description, it was very similar to it.”
After outsmarting the authorities and fleeing Russia, a bruised Parubets worked with investigators to conclude that during his time in detention, a trojanized version of the legitimate Cube Call Recorder app was installed on his phone. The app had many hallmarks of spyware – specifically the Monokle family.
Various additional features were detected on the app, including the ability to track a device’s precise location when not in use, record video and the device’s screen, log inputs, install additional packages, send and read SMS messages, and read messages from other messaging apps…
Japanese actor Miho Nakayama was found dead in a bathtub in her Tokyo home on Friday. She was 54.
Ms Nakayama found success as a singer in the 1980s and 90s – at the height of J-pop’s influence – but was best known for starring in the 1995 film Love Letter.
An acquaintance discovered Ms Nakayama on Friday after she failed to show up for work. They called the paramedics, who confirmed her death at the scene, local media reported.
The cause of her death is under investigation…
KGsays
The Romanian constitutional court has annuled the first round of the presidential election, in which a previously little-known far right pro-Putin candidate, Calin Georgescu, came first, on the grounds of Russian interference – running an online campaign for Georgescu. Presumably it will be re-run. I’m far from sure this was a wise move; people might vote for Georgescu in larger numbers to deliver a “Fuck you” to the political establishment – which is riddled with corruption.
Meanwhile Assad’s regime in Syria looks to be in serious trouble: the city of Hama has now fallen to the Islamist rebel group HTS (Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which was at one time closely associated with Al Qaeda, but has been trying to revamp its image), and is apparently advancing on Homs, while Kurdish-led forces have taken control of the eastern Syrian city of Deir el-Zor. (The Kurds have had a de facto non-aggression pact with Assad, but reportedly withdrew from a part of Aleppo they controlled in an agreement with HTS.) Assad has of course been propped up by Iran, Hezbollah and Russia, but Hezbollah has been badly damaged by Israel, Iran may not be keen to get directly involved, and Putin has redeployed most of the people and equipment he had in Syria to his invasion of Ukraine. Morale in Assad’s forces is reportedly at rock bottom due to poor pay and conditions, and corruption at the top.
What a good thing Trump is appointing an experienced expert with such balanced judgement as his Secretary of Defence!
Speaking to reporters outside a mosque in Istanbul, the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, offered a message of support to the insurgency. He had previously offered to “discuss shaping the future of Syria,” together with Assad, he said, “but we received no response”.
“Idlib, Hama, Homs and after that most probably Damascus … we hope this march in Syria will continue without any issues,” he said. The foreign ministers of Turkey, Iran and Russia are expected to meet tomorrow on the sidelines of a forum in Doha for an urgent meeting on Syria.
One has to wonder whether Erdoğan has received the tacit backing of Netanyahu andor Biden. He’s clearly counting on neither Iran nor Russia being in a position to intervene at a level that will save Assad’s bacon.
“The effects of two hurricanes and a Boeing strike made the job market look worse than it actually was last month. The new data is far more encouraging.”
Expectations heading into this week showed projections of about 200,000 new jobs having been added in the United States in November. As it turns out, according to the new report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the totals were even better than that. NBC News reported:
Job creation in November rebounded from a near-standstill the prior month as the effects of a significant labor strike and violent storms in the Southeast receded, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday. Nonfarm payrolls increased by 227,000 for the month, compared to an upwardly revised 36,000 in October. … September’s payroll count also was revised upward, to 255,000, up 32,000 from the prior estimate.
About a month ago at this time, a jobs report reflected dreadful data, but the numbers painted a misleading picture: The effects of two hurricanes and a Boeing strike made the job market look far worse than it actually was. (Republicans who must’ve known better nevertheless used the news to make wildly deceptive pre-election claims.)
The new data is vastly more encouraging. The latest news wasn’t all good — the unemployment rate inched up to a still-historically-low 4.2%, as was expected, and the labor force declined — but broadly speaking, there’s a fair amount to like in the new data.
As for the political picture, let’s also circle back to previous coverage to put the data in perspective. Over the course of the first three years of Donald Trump’s presidency — when the Republican said the U.S. economy was the greatest in the history of the planet — the economy created roughly 6.38 million jobs, spanning all of 2017, 2018 and 2019.
According to the latest tally, the U.S. economy has created nearly 16.8 million jobs since January 2021 — more than double the combined total of Trump’s first three years. (If we include the fourth year of the Republican’s term, the data looks even worse for him.) [I leave the main COVID year out.]
For some additional context, consider job growth by year over the past decade, updated to reflect the latest data revisions:
2013: 2.3 million
2014: 3 million
2015: 2.7 million
2016: 2.3 million
2017: 2.1 million
2018: 2.3 million
2019: 1.98 million
2020: -9.3 million
2021: 7.2 million
2022: 4.5 million
2023: 3 million
[…] At the same time that Republicans voted to protect Gaetz, other GOP lawmakers said the House will continue to spend taxpayer dollars to not only probe soon-to-be former first son Hunter Biden, but challenge his pardon in court.
“Our investigation must continue,” Republican Rep. Nicole Malliotakis of New York, who voted to keep Gaetz’s report under wraps, told Fox News. [video at the link]
It’s unclear why House Republicans believe it’s important to protect Gaetz but continue to probe Hunter Biden.
It could be because releasing the report into Gaetz’s behavior could doom Gaetz’s future in politics. Gaetz has teased a possible run for governor in Florida, which will be an open-seat race in 2026 as current GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis’ is term limited.
Still, why Republicans would want to help Gaetz is beyond us, as multiple GOP lawmakers have publicly trashed Gaetz for being a total scumbag.
Republican Rep. Max Miller of Ohio said that Gaetz is “literally worse than gum on the bottom of my shoe.”
“I’m looking at him as a member of Congress and the job that he has done here, and it has been abhorrent,” Miller told CNN in November, before Gaetz’s nomination flamed out. “I’m not the only one who thinks this way. I just say the quiet part out loud, and I wish other of my colleagues would have the same courage to do so.” [video at the link]
Despite his tough talk against Gaetz, Miller was one of the 206 House Republicans who voted against releasing the Gaetz report.
A federal appeals court upheld a law that will ban TikTok in the U.S. in the coming months if its Chinese parent company doesn’t sell its stake in the app, dealing another setback to the widely popular video-sharing service in its battle with the federal government.
A panel of three judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit unanimously sided with the Justice Department in declining to review the petition for relief from TikTok and ByteDance, its Chinese parent company, saying the law is constitutional.
“We conclude the portions of the Act the petitioners have standing to challenge, that is the provisions concerning TikTok and its related entities, survive constitutional scrutiny,” Senior Judge Douglas Ginsburg wrote in the majority opinion. “We therefore deny the petitions.”
Congress approved a foreign assistance package in April that included provisions giving TikTok nine months to sever ties with ByteDance or lose access to app stores and web-hosting services in the U.S. President Biden quickly signed the bill into law, and it is set to take effect on Jan. 19, with the possibility of a one-time 90-day delay granted by the president if a sale is in progress by then…
History was made Wednesday when ACLU attorney Chase Strangio pleaded for the medical rights of transgender youth—and became the first transgender person to argue before the Supreme Court while doing so.
The case in question, United States v. Skrmetti, challenges a Tennessee law currently in place which bans transgender minors from accessing gender-affirming medical care such as puberty blockers.
While advocates anxiously await the Supreme Court’s decision, Daily Kos spoke with Gillian Branstetter, a spokesperson for the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project and LGBTQ & HIV Project, about why this ban must be deemed unconstitutional and what this ruling could mean for every American.
Branstetter explained that this “wave of laws targeting transgender people”—referencing bathroom and military bans—is ‘life-threatening” to many trans youth and adults.
Legislation targeting transgender people skyrocketed since 2020 across the U.S., with conservative lawmakers introducing over 400 anti-trans bills in 2022 alone.
But how can states get away with banning access to medical care? Branstetter explains that bigoted lawmakers in Tennessee are relying on the same Supreme Court decision that took away women’s rights to abortion.
[…] “The state of Tennessee is trying to rely on the Supreme Court Dobbs opinion in order to justify banning this care,” she added, explaining that these lawmakers are “functionally asking the Supreme Court to expand the reach” of the devastating and partisan ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade.
[…] When asked about critics who argue that puberty blockers and other forms of treatment for transgender people should only be available to those age 18 or older, Branstetter pointed out that allowing children to go through with puberty that doesn’t align with their gender identity creates more harm.
“I think what comes to mind for most people is the idea that young folks might change their mind and request these changes,” she said. “But of course, leaving them to experience their puberty also leaves them with permanent physical changes that could require extensive surgery and medical care to reverse [should they have to wait until they are 18].”
The bigots targeting transgender medical access have been quick to turn toward studies like one carried out in Finland, which argues that access to gender-affirming care didn’t have any positive impact on suicide rates.
[…] An older Dutch study showed puberty blockers had a positive impact, which further muddied the arguments being waged on both sides of the issue. But Branstetter pointed out that this type of medical care is extremely individualized and must be evaluated by a medical professional on a case-by-case basis.
“I have never spoken with a medical provider that affords his care without parental consent,” she added.
Branstetter also provided examples of families who were forced to completely uproot their lives and move to a state with medical access for their transgender children.
“I think that’s important for folks to understand. Think of what it would take for you to relocate your family to an entirely new place, to find new housing, to find new jobs, to find new schools, to find new caregiving arrangements, to build a new life and an entirely new place,” she said.
“And then ask yourself, would you do that for anything short of essential for your child’s future and well-being? Because that is what these families are being forced to do. […]
Branstetter highlighted Donald Trump’s $21 million attack on transgender people in the last month of his presidential campaign alone.
“We are staring down the barrel of an incoming administration that ran on a campaign of absolute animosity and hatred aimed squarely at transgender people,” Branstetter warned.
As for how everyday citizens can get involved at the ground level, Branstetter said it’s imperative for people to find local and grassroots trans-rights organizations or get involved with state or local ACLU affiliates.
[…] The Supreme Court, which Trump stacked with three picks during his initial term as president, is expected to announce a ruling on the pivotal case in spring or early summer 2025, according to the ACLU.
Posted by a reader of the article:
I spent a number of years supporting orthopedics/biomechanical research as someone with a PhD in the area who also happened to be better than my peers at writing statistical code (so the job fell to me) and then writing the methods/results/limitations sections of papers we published.
So when I saw that the total number of deaths amongst the two groups was just 55 with only 20 suicides, I got suspicious of the generalizability and even the full validity of the results. Statistics don’t work well with low numbers. Here’s the limitations section from the Finnish paper:
The limitations of this study include the non-consideration of confounding factors such as social support, BMI or lifestyle factors. Psychiatric morbidity was analysed on the level of intensity of specialist-level psychiatric contact without disentangling causes of using the services. However, regardless of actual diagnoses set, specialist-level psychiatric treatment contact indicates severe psychiatric morbidity, as specialist-level services are reserved to severe disorders, and national guidelines exist to ensure this similar threshold throughout the country. Some of the psychiatric morbidity warranting specialist-level psychiatric treatment may have emerged only after the contact to gender identity services and may therefore theoretically not truly represent confounding but a pathway linking GD to mortality. However, register data cannot truly reveal the timing of onset of a disorder, and totally disentangling between psychological phenomena may also be challenging; therefore, we have simply called psychiatric morbidity a confounder.
A further limitation is that although the follow-up time in this study was longer than that in many other studies on outcomes in clinical GD adolescent samples, the mean follow-up time of six years could be considered relatively short. Despite the large amounts of data, deaths were rare in our sample, limiting the possibility of more fine-tuned analyses. Moreover, because the register authorities do not allow researchers to track changes in the registered sex, we were not able to run analyses stratified by birth sex, which is a limitation, particularly given the known sex differences in suicide mortality. However, owing to data security and privacy issues, cell frequencies below a certain limit must not be reported. This would have prevented further stratification anyway. Finally, our sample represented clinically gender-referred participants; thus, the findings cannot be generalised to all transgender-identifying youths.
Additionally, Finland has a much better social safety system for everyone, and so even if there really is no difference in suicide deaths for the transgender population in that society, it may not apply to places like the US. The Finnish language doesn’t have gender — like Estonian which I study/speak, and this may impact outcomes as well.
Feminists have long argued that sexist language can have real world consequences for gender relations and the relative status of men and women, and recent research suggests that grammatical gender can shape how people interpret the world around them along gender lines (Boroditsky 2009). Although others have theorized about the connection between grammatical gender in language and societal gender equality (Stahlberg et al. 2007), the current work tests this link empirically by examining differences in gender equality between countries with gendered, natural gender, and genderless language systems. Of the 111 countries investigated, our findings suggest that countries where gendered languages are spoken evidence less gender equality compared to countries with other grammatical gender systems. Furthermore, countries where natural gender languages are spoken demonstrate greater gender equality, which may be due to the ease of creating gender symmetric revisions to instances of sexist language.
After days of watching his chosen defense secretary nominee twist in the wind, Donald Trump has finally released a statement in support of Pete Hegseth.
“Pete Hegseth is doing very well,” Trump posted to his Truth Social account. “His support is strong and deep, much more so than the Fake News would have you believe.” Trump’s running mate Sen. JD Vance also wrote, “Led by President Trump, we’re fighting for Pete Hegseth.”
In addition to the support from Trump and Vance, the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation, credited with creating Project 2025, said it will spend $1 million to cajole Republican senators to back Hegseth. […]
A plan by the incoming Trump administration to slash government funding could kneecap Department of Veterans Affairs health care.
In an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal this week, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who President-elect Donald Trump tapped to lead the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency,” confirmed that they plan to target “unauthorized” federal spending, a category that includes the VA’s medical services.
[…] Historically, in order for a federal agency to operate, Congress passes two different types of legislation: an authorization bill to authorize funding and an appropriations bill to actually allocate the funding.
For example, for the Pentagon, Congress passes the National Defense Authorization Act and a Pentagon appropriations bill every year.
But for most federal agencies, Congress hasn’t bothered with the authorization bills in years, instead streamlining its work by considering the appropriations bills to be self-authorizing.
A 2023 report from the Congressional Research Service notes the distinction between authorization and appropriations bills “is based on chamber rules, rather than a constitutional or general statutory requirement.”
For VA medical services, the last authorization bill was 1996’s Veterans Health Care Eligibility Reform Act, according to the Congressional Budget Office report.
The op-ed from Musk and Ramaswamy about their plans for DOGE, which is the same name as a cryptocurrency Musk has previously touted, confirmed they will pursue an idea Ramaswamy first floated on social media last week.
“We can and should save hundreds of billions each year by defunding government programs that Congress no longer authorizes,” he wrote on X, previously known as Twitter. “We’ll challenge any politician who disagrees to defend the other side.”
Asked about the DOGE proposal at a hearing Wednesday, VA Under Secretary for Health Shereef Elnahal said he would be “highly concerned” about any cuts to the agency and that the department’s lawyers believe it has the legal authority to operate.
Veterans’ demand for care is “actually substationally increasing,” said Elnahal, a Biden administration appointee. “Despite these increases in demand, we’ve seen wait times go down, instead of up, for primary care and mental health. We’ve seen historic performance on quality, patient safety, veterans satisfaction and trust. We want to make sure we maintain those outcomes while we provide accessible high-quality care to vets.”
Lawmakers in both parties have already promised to protect the VA.
“If Republicans in the majority follow through on Ramaswamy’s wishes, it will mean that veterans would no longer be eligible for in-patient services, like surgeries, acute care and injuries that may require urgent care, and out-patient services, like health appointments, immunizations and nutrition and education,” Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., the ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee’s VA subcommittee, said at the hearing before asking Elnahal about DOGE.
Later in the hearing, subcommittee Chairman John Carter, R-Texas, assured that he’s “not going to be standing for anybody trying to abolish anything to do with our Veterans Administration.”
Proposing to cut unauthorized appropriations is “an amateur’s comment,” he added.
“We all are here to support the veterans of our country, and there’s no one on this committee that is trying to do anything to wipe out our veterans or the veteran care. And we will be soldiers in the field fighting on your behalf if something like that comes along,” Carter said.
But in their op-ed, Musk and Ramaswamy also said they plan to circumvent Congress. While a 1974 law called the Impoundment Control Act generally requires a president to spend money that Congress appropriates, the pair noted Trump opposes that law. Trump ignoring that law was part of his first impeachment over withholding congressionally approved aid to Ukraine.
“Mr. Trump has previously suggested this statute is unconstitutional,” they wrote, “and we believe the current Supreme Court would likely side with him on this question.”
A more potent form of fentanyl is contributing to the thousands of overdose deaths that happen every year, health officials warn.
An extremely powerful derivative of fentanyl, called carfentanil, was detected in 513 overdose deaths between 2021 and early 2024, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Carfentanil was designed to tranquilize large animals and is estimated to be 10,000 times stronger than morphine and 100 stronger than fentanyl.
The drug is so potent just 2 mg is needed to tranquilize an elephant; that same amount is powerful enough to kill 50 people, according to a Department of Veteran Affairs. […]
“When Will They Properly Punish Fulton County DA Fani Willis For Crime Of Prosecuting Trump?”
“They sure are trying!”
The Georgia racketeering case against a certain wannabe Dictator On Day One and his remaining alleged co-conspirators has been put on an ice floe and kicked off to Siberia. But that ain’t good enough for That Man’s little toady Jim Jordan, Judicial Watch, or the Georgia Legislature, no siree. They won’t be satisfied until the duly elected incumbent prosecutor of Fulton County is punished somehow for the horrible crime of doing the job she was elected to do.
Ever since Trump got indicted in Fulton County in August of 2023, Jordan’s been RRRR GRRing and stomping his little feet, demanding Willis turn over records that prove her office was doing a dirty collusion with Jack Smith and the House January 6 Select Committee in a conspiracy to make Orangeweave look bad, election interference! Never mind that Jordan, being a US congressman from Not Georgia, had no business whatsoever getting involved with a state prosecution at all, or demanding shit from a state prosecutor. Which Willis let him know in no uncertain terms, roasting his dick on an open fire with a nine-page letter listing all the various ways he’s full of crap.
Enter Judicial Watch Inc., attempting to ride to the rescue and demand these records that they are very sure exist. […]Judicial Watch is a conservative nonprofit of 4Chan shitposters with law degrees headed by Tom Fitton (who is not a lawyer). You may remember them from such other bullshit FOIA fishing expeditions as HILLARY CLINTON SERVER CHYYYNUUHH, MICHELLE OBAMA WENT SKIING, and BILL CLINTON SOCK DRAWER TAPES.
They sued Fani Willis and Fulton County in March, demanding that Willis hand over this for-sure-very-real evidence. The very next day the Open Records Custodian in the Office of the County Attorney told Judicial Watch that there were no such records to turn over. But undeterred, Judicial Watch complained that this was not a proper answer, and demanded that Willis turn over those invisible records, and pay their legal fees, too. Judge Robert McBurney actually agreed with Judicial Watch about the records, finding Willis in default and giving her office until Monday to turn over the records that almost certainly do not exist, and scheduling a hearing for December 20 about those legal fees.
Judicial Watch and right-wing media are naturally declaring this a big in-your-face win […] Jim Jordan also immediately chimed in, also demanding by Monday his own copies of these Snuffleupagus documents for his House Judiciary Committee investigation on whether Joe Biden rang up Fani Willis to demand that she DEEP STATE a certain sweet, innocent former president and his hardworking friends. Jordan has been trying to drag Willis and Nathan Wade before the House Judiciary Committee to answer questions, too. They’re represented by former Georgia governor Roy Barnes, who in September sent Jordan a letter politely informing him that his ass stinks.
I find the tone of your letter to be filled with vitriol and anger. I would suggest you take some deep breaths and calm down so this matter may be discussed without emotion. An anger management course might also help. […]
I am just a country lawyer, unaware of the ways of Washington, D.C., but I must comment on your statements regarding obedience to subpoenas lawfully issued by committees of Congress.
I notice that you were issued with a subpoena of the committee of Congress, which investigated the January 6 insurrection against the government of the United States of America. You failed to appear before that committee. I therefore find your protestations regarding a normal citizen obeying subpoenas to be somewhat hollow. It reminds me of what Jesus said in Matthew 7:3: ‘Why do you see the speck in your brother’s eye but do not notice the log that is in your eye?’ In the South, we have a similar saying: ‘That is like a skunk telling a possum his breath stinks.’
When you have calmed down and attended the anger management class, I will be glad to discuss this matter with you in a logical, dispassionate manner.
Georgia state Republican leaders are also suing Willis for audacity. The Georgia Senate […] put together a Special Committee on Investigations last January while the Legislature was not even in session, and they’re demanding every text, sext, detail of the DA office’s funding, Willis’s testimony in person, her peanut brittle recipe, fucking whatever. They would also like to pass a new law to limit the use of special grand juries and special prosecutors, and a jar of pickled pigs’ feet.
In other Fulton County RICO news, Kenny “The Cheese” Chesebro, dingus coup plotter, filed a motion on Wednesday to withdraw his guilty plea on one felony count of conspiracy to file false documents. Cheesy was sentenced to five years of probation, and then in September Judge Scott McAfee ruled that a count alleging false statements made to a federal court “lie beyond this state’s jurisdiction.” Seems a little late for that, but who knows.
Maybe the future president will name him ambassador to San Marino? We shall see. […]
Last time we checked in with Tommy Tuberville […] by far the Senate’s most breathtakingly stupid human, his old balls were knotted up in confusion over whose job it was to do “advice and consent” on the president-elect’s nominees. Is that the Senate, like it says in the Constitution, or is it somebody else’s job, somebody mysterious who is definitely not Tommy Tuberville? […]
He’s not a very educated guy, y’all. His college degree is in PE […] From a safety school in Arkansas. He’s a real dumbass.
When Tuberville said that shit in the middle of November, he was discussing what would become the first humiliating loss of a nomination for Donald Trump in his new lame-duck presidency, namely Matt Gaetz for attorney general.
Yesterday, Senator Coach Tubfuck was discussing with CNN what’s likely about to be Trump’s second humiliating loss of a nomination, Pete Hegseth for secretary of Defense, and would you believe Tubbity Bobbity Boo hasn’t learned one damn thing about the Senate in the ensuing weeks? [video at the link]
As he explained to CNN’s Manu Raju, Tommy Tuberville isn’t liking this suggestion that “we’re a better vetter and picker of people than Donald Trump.” Of course, everybody is a better vetter and picker of people than Donald Trump, but Tuberville’s fragile mind and heart can’t handle that kind of truth.
“Advice and consent,” Raju tried to explain […]
“Advise and consent,” agreed Tuberville, saying it incorrectly, “but that’s more the Democrats,” he added, because, well, he’s a dumbass.
“But don’t you think both sides should do the vetting?” asked Raju, trying to helpfully help Tuberville […]
“Well, you know, to some, some degree! I mean, but we have to be convinced.”
What?
“I mean, they should do all the background work, they should go after our nominees.”
What?
“I’ve not heard very little from the Left.”
Double negative dumbass say what?
“Donald Trump did all the vetting they needed to do on Pete Hegseth.”
Hahahahahahahahaha, […] dumbass.
Tuberville’s quote ended like this:
“And I just cain’t believe, we even have people on our side, they’re sayin’, ‘Well I’ve gotta look at this, gotta look at that.’ What they’re doin’ is they’re throwin’ rocks at Donald Trump, they’re not throwin’ ‘em at Pete Hegseth. They’re throwin’ ‘em at Donald Trump. Because they’re sayin’ well we don’t believe you did the right vetting and we don’t believe he can do the job.
“Well wait a minute, that’s not our job to do that, that’s the Democrats.”
This is an actual sitting senator from an actual state. And we guarantee he has no idea why anybody would hear and read this with their jaws on the floor, marveling at how little this moron knows about the government of the country where the low-information voters of Alabama decided to let him be the senator.
[…] The president-elect doesn’t take over for another six weeks, but — magically — he has already made America great again.
– He has solved the border crisis. Mexico’s president “has agreed to stop Migration through Mexico, and into the United States, effectively closing our Southern Border,” Trump tells us. “THIS WILL GO A LONG WAY TOWARD STOPPING THE ILLEGAL INVASION OF THE USA.”
– He has brought peace to the Middle East. “Former NATO chief says Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire a ‘direct result’ of incoming Trump admin,” was the headline Trump posted on his social media site on Monday.
– He has scored a breakthrough against the opioid epidemic. He announced that he had secured the “commitment” of the Canadian government “to work with us to end this terrible devastation of U.S. Families.”
– And he has already turned the U.S. economy into the envy of the world. “The Stock Market Just Recorded Its Best Month This Year in the Wake of Trump’s Landslide Victory,” proclaimed the headline of another Trump social media post.
Members of the reality-based community might have noticed that Trump did not do any of these things but rather is claiming credit for the Biden administration’s accomplishments. [Details at the link]
Trump’s quick post-election pivot away from calling America a “failing nation” was inevitable. He spent the past couple of years selling the country a load of bull. Now, he’s inheriting a stronger economy and a safer country than the one he left Joe Biden, with the border more secure and crime rates lower, and inflation tamed to below 3 percent. Contrary to Trump’s apocalyptic campaign claims, the world isn’t on fire and the U.S. military is not dominated by woke drag queens. […]
Trump has already made good on another campaign promise: to give voice to the “forgotten man and woman.” He was referring, of course, to the billionaire class, which has been so unfairly sidelined and persecuted in American life — until now.
Under this peculiar new DEI program, previously forgotten billionaires have been tapped to run the Treasury, Commerce, Interior and Education departments. This week, Trump named another billionaire, Jared Isaacman, to run NASA, and yet another billionaire, Stephen Feinberg, to be deputy defense secretary, under Hegseth. And then there are mega-billionaire Elon Musk and quasi-billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy running the extra-governmental “Department of Government Efficiency.”
It’s all part of a Friends & Family administration that includes ex-con billionaire Charles Kushner (whose son Jared is married to Trump’s daughter Ivanka), tapped to be ambassador to France, reputed billionaire Massad Boulos (whose son is married to Trump’s daughter Tiffany), named “senior adviser on Arab and Middle Eastern affairs,” and fellow billionaire real-estate tycoon Steve Witkoff to be special envoy to the Middle East. On Thursday, Trump tapped two other men with net worths in the hundreds of millions — if not billions — to run Social Security and to be the White House “czar” for artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency.
Yet the very fact that I am pointing out the wealth of these appointees is a sign of my appalling lack of sensitivity toward a group that has suffered so much in America today. Or so says Maye Musk, the mother of Elon (net worth $344 billion).
“I don’t like the word ‘wealthy’ or ‘billionaire.’ I think it’s degrading,” Maye Musk told Fox News. (What is it with these Trump appointees calling in their mothers to defend them?)
She makes a good point. While her own solution — referring to her son as “the genius of the world” — might go a bit far for some, we should stop degrading Trump’s appointees as “billionaires” and start referring to them as “poverty-challenged” or “differently funded” to reflect the everyday barriers and prejudices they must overcome. Things are so hard for Elon Musk, for example, that he has been forced to build a $35 million compound to house his 11 children and their three mothers.
Yet Maye Musk, in her public appearances, is only making things harder for her oppressed son. She also declared on Fox News that it is “going to be quite easy” for Musk and Ramaswamy to achieve their goals, which is to cut $2 trillion annually in federal spending, or nearly one-third of the entire budget. In addition, she’s an unabashed China booster (“so advanced”; “everybody’s happy, friendly and fun”), which will only serve to remind people that her son has been one, too. CNN’s Andy Kaczynski unearthed recordings of Ramaswamy describing Musk as “in China’s pocket,” “bending the knee to Xi Jinping,” and jumping “like a circus monkey” for Chinese business. […]
“The CFPB is accusing Comerica of ‘deliberately disconnecting millions of calls and harvesting illegal junk fees,’ among other alleged violations.”
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Friday charged Comerica Bank with abusing and neglecting vulnerable customers who receive federal benefits.
“The CFPB is suing Comerica Bank for illegally harming disabled and older Americans who count on Social Security and other federal benefits,” CFPB Director Rohit Chopra said in a release.
“By deliberately disconnecting millions of calls and harvesting illegal junk fees, Comerica boosted its bottom line at the expense of Americans living on a fixed income.” [Effing bankers.]
For nearly two decades, the CFPB said in a civil complaint, the Texas-based bank has enjoyed an exclusive contract with the U.S. Department of Treasury to handle delivery of those benefits on prepaid debit cards, known as the Direct Express program.
Direct Express card users are primarily elderly and disabled Social Security beneficiaries who otherwise lack access to traditional forms of banking.
But since 2019, the CFPB says in the lawsuit, “Comerica has impaired cardholders’ ability to protect and access their funds by routinely providing deficient customer service to Direct Express cardholders.”
Among the alleged abuses, according to the CFPB’s lawsuit:
– Comerica and its vendors intentionally terminated almost 25 million customer-service calls [!!!} while callers were on hold before they could speak to a representative about an issue with their Direct Express cards. As a result, Direct – Express cardholders were not able to dispute charges and bookkeeping errors.
– Cardholders whose calls were not terminated were frequently subjected to excessive wait times to speak with a representative, sometimes up to several hours.
– Through its vendors, Comerica frequently told consumers who’d complained about fraudulent enrollment in Direct Express that “no error occurred,” even though the bank had already determined there was, in fact, enrollment fraud.
– Through the vendors, Comerica forced Direct Express cardholders to pay ATM fees to access their government benefits in situations where the cardholders were entitled to free withdrawals.
– Comerica refused to honor timely stop-payment requests, in certain cases requiring cardholders to instead request a new debit card. When cardholders sought to minimize their time without a card and access to funds, Comerica charged them fees to expedite delivery.
The agency called Direct Express customers “captive to Comerica” and said that, rather than ensure there was sufficient customer service to handle calls from Social Security and other benefits recipients, Comerica “cut corners to boost its bottom line.”
“When people had problems with their accounts, it was often impossible to talk to someone who would help,” the agency said. […]
“If Homs were to fall, it would leave three of the country’s five largest cities in the hands of the forces led by the militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.”
Thousands of people have fled the Syrian city of Homs as rebel fighters pushed further south with their rapid assault on government forces, a leading monitoring group said.
If the strategically important municipality were to fall, it would leave three of the country’s five largest cities in the hands of the forces led by the militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and no major cities between rebel forces and the Syrian capital of Damascus.
In less than two weeks they have already captured the second city of Aleppo in the north, as well as the central city of Hama — where government forces were forced out Thursday.
[…] While Hama was a more symbolic victory for the HTS-led insurgents, taking Homs would send a more practical message, said Neil Quilliam, an associate fellow with the MENA Programme at Chatham House, a London-based think tank.
Homs “is a stepping stone to Damascus and what comes next,” he told NBC News on Friday. “It would be passing through a threshold that suggests to the [Syrian] forces and all Syrians that HTS and those fighting forces with it are about to bear down on the capital and sweep away the regime.” [Important, logistically.]
With his forces nearing, thousands of people had fled towards western coastal regions, a stronghold of the government where fighting has remained less fierce than in other parts of the country, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Friday.
Various reports from around the country also suggested that the fall of Aleppo and Hama, as well other cities such as Idlib and numerous rural settlements, has significantly strained Assad’s forces as fighting between government troops and various rebel groups raged around the country.
Pro-Assad soldiers were also battling Kurdish forces who seized government positions in eastern Syria near the cities of Raqqa and Deir Ez-Zour, the Observatory said.
To the south of the country, state media quoted Jordan’s interior ministry as saying that it was closing its Jaber border crossing to all outgoing traffic “due to the security conditions surrounding southern Syria.” […]
More details concerning HTS history, and HTS preparations for the current offensive, are available at the link.
[…] [Trump] launched the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), to be led by Musk and failed White House hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy. The New York Times reported that the duo arrived on Capitol Hill “for a series of sitdowns with lawmakers that culminated in an afternoon session open to all congressional Republicans.”
Mr. Musk and Mr. Ramaswamy each delivered roughly a minute of introductory remarks, as if to show off their talent for streamlining in a roomful of officials known for long-windedness. They disclosed little in the way of their plans for where to find spending cuts, according to those who attended the closed-door meeting, instead emphasizing how badly both the government and its $36 trillion debt had ballooned.
That was, of course, an odd message to deliver to a group of congressional Republicans who (a) made the debt vastly worse; and (b) are eager to approve massive tax breaks without paying for them.
Nevertheless, there’s been an enormous amount of hype surrounding the DOGE endeavor, and as The Washington Post reported, members of Congress — many of whom realize that Musk has Trump’s ear — “are eagerly signing up for the hottest new ticket on Capitol Hill” and “jockeying to be involved in the new commission.”
Perhaps now would be a good time to start lowering expectations.
It’s an inconvenient detail, to be sure, but there’s no reason to assume that Musk and Ramaswamy have any idea what they’re doing, their private-sector successes notwithstanding. Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, for example, is a member of the Senate DOGE working group, but he conceded that the wealthy duo leading the initiative need a little bit “School House Rock” and haven’t yet learned “political realities.”
Punchbowl News’ Jake Sherman, an MSNBC contributor, spoke to a senior Republican aide this week who described Musk and Ramaswamy as “two people who know nothing about how the government works pretending they can cut a trillion dollars.” The same aide predicted that the entire endeavor will likely end in “disaster.”
Making matters worse is that the leaders of the DOGE panel don’t actually have any bureaucratic power. Even the name is a misnomer of sorts: A casual person might see the word “department” and think this is an actual governmental agency with some kind of authority.
That assumption would be wrong. This is an advisory panel. It has about as much power to cut federal spending as you and I do. (DOGE, incidentally, appears to have been named after a cryptocurrency the world’s wealthiest man likes.)
Even if Musk and Ramaswamy believe they’ve uncovered all kinds of federal investments that deserve to be scrapped — a dubious proposition given their lack of familiarity with the subject matter — the best they could do is come up with some kind of memo filled with suggestions. It would still fall to Congress — the institution that still has the power of the purse — to make appropriations decisions as members see fit.
[…] there have been a variety of commissions, committees, and panels along these lines over the years, and the results tend to be underwhelming. It’s among the reasons it’s probably best not to expect DOGE-related miracles anytime soon.
Melania Trump might not return to the White House with her husband in January, but she will happily go to New York to work a seasonal grift. The returning first lady used Fox News’ airwaves Friday to hawk her book, some Christmas ornaments—and gaudy jewelry, of course.
After hyping the sit-down as Melania’s “first interview since winning the election,” the braintrust at “Fox & Friends” chatted with the president-elect’s aloof spouse before segueing into the hard sell.
“We’re not too far away from Christmas. And as it turns out, your book is on The New York Times Best Seller lists,” host Steve Doocy said. “It’s also a fantastic last-minute gift. It’s the perfect size to put in a big stocking. It’s a great stocking stuffer.”
Released during the 2024 election cycle, Melania’s memoir was an excuse to lazily campaign for her husband while promoting her wares with strange videos—all while unabashedly capitalizing on the assassination attempt against her husband.
Doing her best impression of a QVC host, Melania got down to brass tacks (almost literally) by hawking a new line of brass Christmas ornaments.
“These are very patriotic this year, as you could see. It’s all red, white and blue,” she explained.
The ornaments cost $90 with the “option of a digital collectible.” Is that too steep a price for a garish gold-plated brass ornament? You can get something similar from Melania for just $75, if you’re on a budget. But wait—there’s more!
The “Lady Liberty” necklace looks like a gold-plated Statue of Liberty memorial coin and costs a cool $600. If you want to look like you got swindled on your trip to the Big Apple, run over there and buy it now! [video at the link]
The Trump family crest could easily feature a huckster truck and a snake oil salesman. Whether it’s steaks, NFT trading cards, cryptocurrency, gold sneakers, or Christmas memorabilia, the Trumps are willing to sell anything for a buck. At least Melania’s latest grift is more seasonal than the guitars her husband was recently selling.
Chances that Melania forgoes the White House altogether and simply posts up at Fox News to hawk jewelry and whatever else she can sell to MyPillow devotees seem high. Sorry, Mike Lindell: Fox News is now the MAGA home shopping network.
Now, amidst other drastic changes to its workforce and culture, the billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Times has said that he wants to integrate an AI-powered “bias meter” into the paper’s coverage, in an apparent effort to make its reporting more politically neutral.
News of the bias meter was first spotted by blogger Oliver Darcy, who wrote Wednesday about the apparent plan. Soon-Shiong initially mentioned the bias meter on the podcast of pro-Trump CNN contributor (and recent LA Times editorial board member) Scott Jennings. The point of the meter would be so that “someone could understand, as a reader, that the source of the article has some level of bias,” he told Jennings. Soon-Shiong elaborated that readers would be able to “press a button and get both sides of that exact same story, based on that story, and then give comments.” Soon-Shiong has said he wants to have such a function at the paper by as early as January of 2025.
Little is known about how such a meter would actually work. However, Soon-Shiong’s apparent push for algorithmically enforced “neutrality” comes at a time when sources close to the paper claim the billionaire is increasingly showing his own lack of it. Indeed, Darcy’s article notes that Soon-Shiong has increasing “morphed into a Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Jennings fanboy” and that since “Trump’s victory in November, Soon-Shiong has turned to X to criticize the news media, praise Trump’s cabinet picks, and appeal to a MAGA audience.” Soon-Shiong also previously sought a role in the first Trump administration…
That carries the hidden assumption that there are precisely two sides, and that both sides have equal standing.
An international team of polar researchers has discovered microbiota—a community of microorganisms—living beneath the permanently frozen ice cover of Antarctica’s Lake Enigma. Their findings, detailed in a December 3 study published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, reveal a previously unknown ecosystem and hint at a lake once thriving with life before it froze over.
Lake Enigma sits between two glaciers, Amorphous and Boulder Clay, in Antarctica’s Northern Foothills. Given the area’s average temperature of 6.8 degrees Fahrenheit (-14 degrees Celsius) and lows of up to -41.26 degrees Fahrenheit (-40.7 degrees Celsius), experts understandably assumed that Lake Enigma was completely frozen.
During the summers of 2019 and 2020, the team—including researchers from the Institute of Polar Sciences, National Research Council of Italy (ISP-CNR)—discovered, to their surprise, that the lake was not fully frozen. Using ground-penetrating radars, they found a layer of water with a maximum depth of 39.4 feet (12 meters) about 36 feet (11 meters) below the icy surface.
Consequently, the team drilled through the ice to collect samples with a technique that prevented the water from getting contaminated. Back at the lab, the researchers found something surprising in the samples: life.
They identified microorganisms, including bacteria such as Pseudomonadota, Actinobacteriota, and Bacteroidota, and also the “presence, and sometimes even dominance, of ultrasmall bacteria belonging to the superphylum Patescibacteria,” the researchers wrote in the study. Superphylum Patescibacteria is an extremely simple bacteria with limited functions…
Pirates are doing their very best to adapt to the modern world, swapping out their cannons and blunderbusses for more updated weaponry, yet piracy has been on the decline since the early 20teens. Security is just too tight, it seems, so a group of hijackers off the coast of Somalia tried a new tactic: Just get the security team on your side.
That’s the method employed by a group that just hijacked a Chinese fishing vessel, according to sources who spoke with the Associated Press. Apparently both security guards on the ship just threw their lot in with the hijackers, leaving their fishing careers for a new life on the seas:…
[…] one of the issues under scrutiny by Trump’s allies appears to be birthright citizenship — the declaration in the 14th Amendment to the Constitution that anyone born on U.S. soil is a U.S. citizen, regardless of their parents’ nationalities or immigration status.
Some prospective members of Trump’s team, including anti-immigration advisers Stephen Miller and Thomas Homan, have said they intend to stop issuing federal identification documents such as Social Security cards and passports to infants born in the U.S. to undocumented migrant parents, according to The New York Times.
This first step down a path to deny citizenship to some individuals born in the United States reflects a conflict that’s been going on for nearly 200 years: who gets to be an American citizen.
Debates in American history over who gets citizenship and what kind of citizenship they get have always involved questions of race and ethnicity, as we have learned through our individual research on the historical status of Native Americans and African Americans and joint research on restricting Chinese immigration.
Nonetheless, even in the highly racialized political environment of the late 19th century, the U.S. Supreme Court endorsed an expansive view of birthright citizenship. In an 1898 ruling, the court decreed that the U.S.-born children of immigrants were citizens, regardless of their parents’ ancestry.
That decision set the terms for the current controversy, as various Republican leaders, U.S. Sens. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, as well as Vice President-elect JD Vance, have claimed that they will possess the power to overturn more than a century of federal constitutional law and policy and deny birthright citizenship.
[…] Before the Civil War, the U.S. had generally followed the English practice of granting citizenship to children born in the country.
In 1857, though, the Supreme Court had decided the Dred Scott v. Sandford case, with Chief Justice Roger Taney declaring that people of African descent living in the U.S. – whether free or enslaved, and regardless of where they were born – were not actually U.S. citizens.
After the Civil War, Congress explicitly rejected the Dred Scott decision, first by passing legislation reversing the ruling and then by writing the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which specified that “[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
This broad language intentionally included more than just the people who had been freed from slavery at the end of the Civil War: During legislative debate, members of Congress decided that the amendment should cover the children of other nonwhite groups, such as Chinese immigrants and those identified at the time as “Gypsies.”
This inclusive view of citizenship, however, still had an area judges hadn’t made clear yet – the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” In 1884, the Supreme Court had to interpret those words when deciding the case of a Native American who wanted to be a citizen, had renounced his tribal membership and attempted to register to vote.
The justices ruled that even though John Elk had been born in the U.S., he was born on a reservation as a member of a Native American tribe and was therefore subject to the tribe’s jurisdiction at his birth – not that of the United States. He was, they ruled, not a citizen.
In 1887, Congress did pass a law creating a path to citizenship for at least some Native Americans; it took until 1924 for all Native Americans born on U.S. soil to be recognized as citizens.
This inclusive view of citizenship, however, still had an area judges hadn’t made clear yet – the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” In 1884, the Supreme Court had to interpret those words when deciding the case of a Native American who wanted to be a citizen, had renounced his tribal membership and attempted to register to vote.
The justices ruled that even though John Elk had been born in the U.S., he was born on a reservation as a member of a Native American tribe and was therefore subject to the tribe’s jurisdiction at his birth – not that of the United States. He was, they ruled, not a citizen.
In 1887, Congress did pass a law creating a path to citizenship for at least some Native Americans; it took until 1924 for all Native Americans born on U.S. soil to be recognized as citizens.
[…] Trump is just the latest in a long line of politicians who have objected to the fact that Latin American immigrants who come to the U.S. without legal permission can have babies who are U.S. citizens. Most legal scholars, even those who are quite conservative, see little merit in claims that the established rules can be altered.
At least until now, the courts have continued to uphold the centuries-long history of birthright citizenship, dating back to before the Constitution itself and early American court rulings. But if the Trump administration pursues the policies that key figures have discussed, the question seems likely to reach the Supreme Court again, with the fundamental principle hanging in the balance.
…
The idea for the project is pretty simple, the team set out to see if it would be possible to pull a vessel through the water with nothing more than the power of a few fish. To do this, they assemble a rig out of plastic piping, pool noodles and wood that can hold the fish securely. This rig fits onto the front of an inflatable boat with a pivot point so that the fish can be directed to swim any way you want to go…
Millions of Americans will lose their health insurance coverage across the next few years if Republicans get their way, according to a report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office published on Thursday.
That’s because Republicans want to allow the expiration of enhanced premium tax credits, which millions receive to help pay for health insurance in the Affordable Care Act marketplace.
The CBO estimates that Republican plans to let the tax credits expire would not only lead to a loss of coverage for “3.8 million, on average, in each year over the 2026-2034 period,” but also force those who remain in the marketplace to face higher premiums.
Premiums would rise by 4.3% in 2026, the CBO estimated, with them eventually rising by 7.9%.
“CBO expects that healthier-than-average people will exit the marketplaces if the expanded credits are no longer available and, in response, insurers will raise premiums for the remaining enrollees,” the report said.
The expanded tax credits were created in the American Rescue Plan—the landmark COVID-19-relief legislation the Democratic-controlled Congress passed at the start of President Joe Biden’s administration—and were extended when the Democratic Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022. The credits are set to expire at the end of 2025 but would need to be extended earlier than that to “avoid negatively impacting marketplace enrollment,” according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-leaning think tank.
The tax credits lowered the cost of health insurance premiums by 44% ($705 annually) for those using them, according to KFF. [Wow. That’s a significant reduction in cost.]
But Republicans want to let the tax credits expire.
“Health care reform’s going to be a big part of the agenda. When I say we’re going to have a very aggressive first 100 days agenda, we got a lot of things still on the table,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said at a campaign event ahead of the November election.
“The ACA is so deeply ingrained, we need massive reform to make this work, and we got a lot of ideas on how to do that,” he added.
Cynthia Cox, vice president and ACA policy researcher at KFF, told CBS News that if Republicans let the tax credits expire, millions of Americans “could go from paying no more than 8.5% of their income to easily paying 20% or more. I imagine a lot of those folks would drop coverage.”
Republicans would cause this harm while at the same time working to pass tax cuts for wealthy corporations. For example, Trump wants to lower the corporate tax rate from 21% to 15%, a massive giveaway to businesses. […]
Speaker Mike Johnson looks hyper happy lately as he talks about all of Trump’s plans. It’s like he on some kind of drug.
Over the course of her 2024 campaign, Republican Kelly Ayotte pledged that, if elected governor of New Hampshire, she wouldn’t legislate to restrict abortion access. Republican leaders in the legislature made similar promises. Of course, Ayotte’s own record in the U.S. Senate includes introducing a national abortion ban. Nevertheless, enough New Hampshire voters seemed to take Ayotte and the GOP at their word, handing them the governor’s office and both chambers of the legislature.
Fast forward to this week. Ahead of the 2025 legislative session, New Hampshire Republicans have filed not one but three anti-abortion bills — including one to criminalize so-called “abortion trafficking,” which is just a thinly veiled attack on abortion-related travel and young people’s access to the procedure. State Rep. Glenn Cordelli (R) filed the bill to establish criminal and civil penalties for “recruitment, harboring, or transporting” a minor to have an abortion without parental permission. Tennessee and Idaho have previously passed nearly identical laws. Just this week, a court ruled that parts of Idaho’s law — specifically the “harboring” and “transporting” a minor parts — can take effect, while Tennessee’s remains temporarily blocked in court.
Cordelli took a page from anti-abortion activists across the country and suggested the bill isn’t even about abortion but rather, “parental rights.” He told the New Hampshire Bulletin, “I view it as more of a parental rights issue, not an abortion issue. A parent has the right to know what’s going on. I’ve even heard it being termed ‘kidnapping.’” The invocation of parents’ supposed, inalienable rights to control their children’s bodies has similarly become Republicans’ main line of attack against gender-affirming care for trans youth…
For over a week, New Jersey residents have spotted unidentified aircraft in the northern part of the state, including Morris County and near Newark — and now the authorities are urging people to remain calm.
The FBI’s Newark office, along with Morris County officials, recently issued a statement asking the public to share any information they might have on the mysterious drones, while reiterating that there is “no known threat” to the public. And NJ Governor Phil Murphy said that his office is actively monitoring the situation.
The drones were captured on camera by residents in multiple boroughs in the state, mostly at night. Some images and videos shared in news broadcasts and social media depict strange winged aircraft that look like small planes (or “car-sized drones”). Others seem like groups of consumer-level drone copters.
The drones would fly back and forth for “hours,” some witnesses said. Following the reports, the FAA has banned drones from flying over President-elect Donald Trump’s New Jersey golf course, NJ.com reports…
KGsays
Lynna, OM@186,
There is also a report of Druze militias fighting Assad’s forces in the southern city of Sweida. It looks like the rapid progress of the HTS offensive has encouraged other rebel groups to join in – quite possibly as much to secure their own positions vis-a-vis the HTS as to help it oust Assad. Diplomatic meetings are planned for the weekend (one between Assad’s regime and the governments of Iraq and Iran, another between Russia, Iran and Turkey), but events on the ground may outpace any efforts to shore up the regime.
birgerjohanssonsays
Remember Edna Krabappel saying ‘no , don’t destroy the school, think of the children’ (to Bart Simpson driving a tank) with a total lack of passion.
That’s me saying “no, shooting a health insurance CEO is wrong”.
I do not condone it, but there are a lot of other people dying right now and my empathy gets thin on the ground.
.
There are a lot of Russian attempts to gain ground in Ukraine before the mud makes advances impossible. Practically all of them end in bloody fiascos as there are not enough APCs nor enough drone-jamming equipment. Putin has utter contempt for the lives of his soldiers.
“From the Justice Department to breaking news, anonymity plays a huge role in ensuring accountability, especially as to sexual assault and misconduct.”
Following a slew of allegations about excessive drinking, financial mismanagement and mistreatment of women, […] Trump’s choice for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, returned to Capitol Hill to try to secure the support of senators who will decide whether to confirm him.
His visit followed Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, a U.S. Army veteran and sexual assault survivor, revealing on Fox News Thursday morning that she has not yet decided whether to support Hegseth.
Hegseth has denied any wrongdoing amid the flurry of allegations, including a woman’s accusation that he raped her in a Monterey, California, hotel room in 2017. (That accusation is detailed in a 2017 report by the Monterey Police Department that has been made publicly available in recent weeks.) Hegseth says the incident was consensual, though he paid the woman an undisclosed amount as part of a settlement agreement. Monterey County District Attorney Jeannine Pacioni has said her office declined to file charges at the time because “no charges were supported by proof beyond a reasonable doubt.”
[…] Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. told Fox News‘ Sean Hannity on Wednesday: “The allegations against Pete are anonymous sources. I’m not going to make any decisions based on an anonymous source. If you’re not willing to raise your hand under oath and make the accusation, it doesn’t count. I’ve heard everything about all of these people. None of it counts. No rumors, no innuendo.”
When Hannity responded that Graham, a longtime member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, participated in the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Graham smiled. “I’ve seen this movie before,” he said, appearing to ignore the extensive, voluntary public testimony during the Kavanaugh hearings from Christine Blasey Ford, who accused him of sexually assaulting her when they were in high school in the 1980s. […]
Graham doubled down on that position later Thursday, posting a clip of his Fox News conversation with a caption that ended with: “Anonymous sources don’t count.”
And his position has been echoed by Republican Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, who decried the unwillingness of anonymous sources to appear on cable news and answer questions. […]
[…] to discount serious allegations simply because the sources were granted anonymity is misguided.
For one, while the sources of anonymous allegations are not named publicly, their identities are known to the journalists reporting them. Journalists also work to verify and/or corroborate the information such sources provide. As legendary journalist Bob Woodward noted in “Fear,” his first book focused on Trump’s first term, he uses anonymous sources “to get the real truth” and remains fully confident in his reporting because “[t]he sources are not anonymous to me. … I know exactly who they are.”
And, of course, at least one of the anonymous people featured in reporting about Hegseth isn’t anonymous to Hegseth: The Jane Doe who has accused him of rape and with whom he signed an agreement; Hegseth and his lawyer are well aware of her identity. (To be clear, there’s no indication Jane Doe herself has been a source in media reports about her accusation.)
Yet Graham might be purposefully eliding those facts because it allows him and other conservatives to continue their campaign against the “mainstream media” or “fake news” for its purported bias against Trump and/or Republicans writ large.
[…] Anonymity — be it through media sources or within our justice system — is as central to holding power to account as is a free press.
[…] Anonymity for victims can be especially important in criminal investigations of sexual assault and other violent crimes. In its ongoing criminal case against music mogul Sean “P. Diddy” Combs, for instance, federal prosecutors have relied on an as-yet unknown number of anonymous victims of Combs’ alleged physical and/or sexual abuse […]
Combs is currently seeking an order that would force prosecutors to disclose their names. But, to date, prosecutors have vigorously opposed Combs’ motion, noting in a recent brief that courts “routinely deny” defense demands to identify victims because of the demonstrated risks to “witness safety, the potential for witness intimidation or subornation of perjury.” And that information is denied to criminal defendants, who have clear constitutional rights to process and to confront their accusers.
Unlike Combs, Hegseth has never been charged with a crime, much less a multiyear racketeering conspiracy involving sex trafficking. He is under scrutiny because the president-elect wants to entrust him with one of the nation’s most critical Cabinet posts, not punish or deter him through a prison sentence.
Still, his allies seem to believe anonymous sources are worth less in the Senate confirmation process than in a criminal prosecution. […]
given our historical experience in revealing “genuine insight into the uses and abuses of power” through anonymous sources, I’d like to remind Graham: They count. A lot.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Syria background.
What does Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham believe in?
Once affiliated to al-Qaeda, HTS has since rejected transnational jihad but maintains an authoritarian rule rooted in Salafist principles
Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, known in English as the Committee for the Liberation of the Levant, was created in January 2017 as a merger of several political and military Syrian opposition groups, most of which were guided by some form of ultraconservative jihadist ideology.
Yet at its heart, HTS is the latest rebrand of Jabhat al-Nusra, also known as the Nusra Front, a hard-line rebel group founded by [Abu Muhammad al-Jolani] in 2012 to oppose Bashar al-Assad’s rule and turn Syria into a Sunni Islamic state. […] in 2013 it pledged its allegiance to al-Qaeda […] Jolani began to distance himself from al-Qaeda’s transnational jihadi ideology, expressing a desire for international legitimacy. Nusra officially broke links with al-Qaeda in 2016, rebranding […] and gradually rooted out elements committed to carrying out attacks outside Syria. […] it began to pursue a more moderate, nationally focused line. HTS is nonetheless listed as a terrorist organisation by the United States and the UK.
[…]
The administration running rebel-held Idlib province, known as the Syrian Salvation Government, is dominated by HTS. […] While they don’t impose niqab dress on women, they do call on women to wear hijab. […] an expert on armed groups in Syria, said it was important to note existing practices in the province. “Idlib has strong religious norms, […] People are relatively conservative regardless of what HTS does.”
[…]
HTS has sought to distance itself from more rigid forms of Islamic rule associated with previous iterations of the group, including the use of hudud punishment such as flogging and stoning. Jolani has previously remarked: “Governance should be consistent with Islamic sharia, but not according to the standards of ISIS or even Saudi Arabia.”
[…]
HTS has stated that it will protect religious and ethnic minorities under its rule [Christian and Kurdish]. […] However […] Nusra forced members of the Druze minority to convert to Sunni Islam […] HTS has maintained that policy; it hasn’t said to Druze people they can go back to their original religion. […] [Jolani] returned some homes that were previously seized from the Druze. Jolani has made similar overtures towards Christians, some of whom similarly had their houses in Idlib seized.
[…]
Freedom of expression remains severely stifled by HTS, with violence and arbitrary arrests
[…]
the societies in Aleppo and Hama governorates, which HTS is currently attempting to take control of, are vastly different to Idlib, and would require a more inclusive style of government with the involvement of other groups. […] Hama and Aleppo are big cities with little existing HTS presence. “HTS wouldn’t have the means to rule themselves […] no alternative but to share and make concessions with existing local administrations”.
A Saskatchewan man who abducted his daughter to prevent her from getting the COVID-19 vaccine was sentenced Friday morning at Court of King’s Bench in Regina.
Justice MacMillan-Brown gave Michael Jackson, 55, a one-year jail sentence, which he has already more than served while his case was before the courts, 200 days of probation and 100 hours of community service…
Jackson’s conditions include no contact with his daughter and her mother, who is also his ex-wife…
-Donald Trump’s transition team is considering canceling the U.S. Postal Service’s contracts to electrify its delivery fleet, as part of a broader suite of executive orders targeting electric vehicles, according to three sources familiar with the plans.
The move, which could be unveiled in the early days of Trump’s administration that begins on Jan. 20, is in line with Trump’s campaign promises to roll back President Joe Biden’s efforts to decarbonize U.S. transportation to fight climate change – an agenda Trump has said is unnecessary and potentially damaging to the economy…
Bashar al-Assad’s family fled to Russia in the days after rebel forces launched a shock offensive that captured swathes of territory across northern Syria, it has been revealed.
It comes after a source close to the Kremlin told Bloomberg News that Moscow had no plans to rescue the Syrian president, with Vladimir Putin said to be disgusted by reports of regime troops fleeing their positions.
“Russia doesn’t have a plan to save Assad and doesn’t see one emerging as long as the Syrian president’s army continues to abandon its positions,” said the source.
Asma al-Assad, the Syrian president’s British-born wife, fled with their three children last week, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, citing Syrian security officials and Arab officials.
Assad’s two brothers-in-law have also left Syria and travelled to the United Arab Emirates, the newspaper said.
It is unclear whether the Syrian president has remained in his country…
Israel showed the “power” of the F-35 stealth fighter jet during its late October retaliatory strikes against Iran, Britain’s top military officer said on Wednesday.
Adm. Tony Radakin, the UK’s chief of defense staff, disclosed that Israel used its F-35s to carry out the widespread October 26 strikes against military sites across Iran, including air-defense systems and missile-manufacturing facilities.
It appeared to mark the first confirmation from a Western government that Israel had used its fifth-generation aircraft in the operation, which came in response to a massive Iranian missile attack at the start of the month. It was reported at the time that Israel flew its F-35s and fired air-launched ballistic missiles.
“Israel used more than 100 aircraft, carrying fewer than 100 munitions, and with no aircraft getting within 100 miles of the target in the first wave, and that took down nearly the entirety of Iran’s air-defense system,” Radakin said during a Royal United Services Institute lecture in London…
More than 100 aircraft, but fewer than 100 munitions? What?
Millions of tons of coal ash left over from burning the planet’s dirtiest fossil fuel are sitting in ponds and landfills, able to leach into waterways and pollute soil. But this toxic waste may also be a treasure trove for the rare earth elements needed to propel the world toward clean energy.
Scientists analyzed coal ash from power plants across the United States and found it could contain up to 11 million tons of rare earth elements — nearly eight times the amount the US has in domestic reserves — worth around $8.4 billion, according to recent research led by the University of Texas at Austin…
These so-called rare earths are a cluster of metallic elements, with names like scandium, neodymium and yttrium, which exist in the Earth’s core. They have a critical role in clean technology, including electric vehicles, solar panels and wind turbines…
An atheist writer and critical race theory critic who made his name submitting fake articles for publication in progressive academic journals and later attacking “liberal” evangelicals has a new target: conservative Christian nationalists.
James Lindsay, who describes himself as a “professional troublemaker,” rewrote parts of “The Communist Manifesto,” adding some critiques of “the liberal establishment,” and then sent it off to the American Reformer, an online magazine that seeks to “promote a vigorous Christian approach to the cultural challenges of our day.”
The essay, published with a fake byline of “Marcus Carlson,” was published in mid-November, and begins with a lead that mimics the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
“A rising spirit is haunting America: the spirit of a true Christian Right,” the essay begins, reminiscent of the opening lines of “The Communist Manifesto”: “A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism.”
The idea, Lindsay explained, was to embarrass what he described as “Woke Right” conservatives by getting them to publish the works of actual communists.
“They published Karl Marx’s definitive Communist work, dressed up to resemble their own pompous, self-pitying drivel, when it was submitted from a completely unknown author with no internet footprint whatsoever bearing the name ‘Marcus Carlson,’” Lindsay wrote in revealing his hoax, an announcement that coincided with the magazine’s “Giving Tuesday” campaign.
The founder of American Reformer seemed to take the hoax in stride.
“Well, you have to hand it to James Lindsey — he ‘got us,’” Josh Abbotoy, co-founder of American Reformer, wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, referring to Lindsay’s hoax.
The publication’s editors, who did not respond to a request for comment, added Lindsay’s byline to the story but did not retract it. However, in an editor’s note, they wrote that they’d be beefing up their editorial screening — and noted Lindsay’s lack of faith.
“The following article was written by James Lindsay, who, as an avowed atheist, is not eligible for publication in American Reformer,” the editors wrote…
Bekenstein Boundsays
The EU splintering … one more “not-the-next-hegemon”.
South Korea’s president said he’s “truly sorry” for causing public anxiety with his declaration of martial law earlier this week, and promised not to make another attempt to impose it.
President Yoon Suk Yeol made a public apology in a brief televised address Saturday morning, hours ahead of a parliamentary vote on a motion to impeach him…
But he apologized! And said he wouldn’t do it again. So there’s no need to impeach him.
/s
Amid the advances, evacuations were initiated for commanders and personnel from the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force, according to Iranian officials and regional commanders cited in the Times report. Diplomatic staff serving at the Iranian Embassy in Damascus were also reportedly being evacuated.
Earlier on Tuesday, Russian navy ships were spotted leaving the Kremlin’s crucial seaport in the Mediterranean as the civil war threatens to engulf it.
Naval analyst H I Sutton said Russia’s Tartus naval base in Syria was now under threat from rebel attack as the fast-moving front line closed in.
Assad’s allies are pulling out because his army is giving up. The soldiers are fleeing rather then fight on a large enough scale that the army has started to come apart. That being the case no small bit of help is going to do anything and neither Russia or Iran is in a position to provide large scale help.
The only thing working in Assad’s favor is that the rebels could turn on each other on a large enough scale to prevent progress against Assad.
A Connecticut appeals court on Friday largely upheld a nearly $1.3 billion defamation verdict against conspiracy theorist Alex Jones in a case accusing the Infowars founder of spreading lies about the 2012 Sandy Hook mass shooting.
A three-judge panel of the Connecticut Appellate Court found that a jury’s October 2022 decision to award $965 million in damages plus attorneys fees and costs to families of the shooting’s victims was not unreasonable given the mental anguish they suffered due to the lies by Jones about Sandy Hook.
The appeals court cut a secondary penalty of $150 million but upheld the $1 billion primary damages. Jones is sure to appeal again but it isn’t likely to work or get the court to stall the case now.
Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) said Friday that lawmakers could force another vote to release former Rep. Matt Gaetz’s (R-Fla.) Ethics report if President-elect Trump brings him into a White House job.
This is a weird one but some Republicans are threatening that Congress could go public with the Gaetz report if he is giving a job anyplace in the Trump administration. They want him pushed out far enough they never have to see or deal with him again. Which really makes me wonder just how bad that report is but it may just be that Gaetz has literately no allies in Congress. Despite the short time he was there he just made a a group of people that don’t like him and a group of people who hate him.
Historians of a small Maryland town were recently stumped by a 100-year-old mystery contraption stored in their archives for almost three decades. After turning to the public for help, the Dorchester County Historical Society has finally figured out the odd machine’s original purpose.
According to WBOC on October 29th, the Dorchester County Historical Society in Cambridge, Maryland, had spent weeks trying to determine what its “Neild Museum gadget” was originally designed to do. Although it displays clear signs of age, the tool is still in working order, and consists of two horizontal spinning pins–one of which is topped with pegs–installed on a ceramic countertop. The machine appears to originally have been operated by hand, but archivists note that a motor system was added later to help automate its task—whatever it was…
“We potentially think it was a Maryland beaten biscuit maker created by a man who was trying to help his aunt with [her] business,” Phillips told WBOC. “[T]he belief is that this would’ve helped beat the air out of the dough as the biscuits were being created.” …
Two days after someone shot and killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan, police located the “distinctive” backpack the attacker was wearing. They removed it from Central Park, unopened, using an excavator.
As many people, including Peak Design CEO Pete Dearing, noticed, it appears to be the company’s Everyday V1 backpack, as shown in a photo obtained by ABC News.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol survived an impeachment vote in the opposition-led parliament on Saturday that was prompted by his short-lived attempt to impose martial law this week, after members of his party boycotted the session.
Only 195 votes were cast, below the 200 needed for the vote to count, and the motion was scrapped.
“The entire nation is watching the decision being made here at the National Assembly today. The world is watching,” said Speaker Woo Won-shik, adding that it was unfortunate that not enough lawmakers participated for the votes to be tallied.
The main opposition Democratic Party vowed to try again, while Yoon’s party said it would find a “more orderly, responsible” way to resolve the crisis…
StevoRsays
@499. birgerjohansson : “Yes, I know Portugal does not have siesta.”
I did NOT know that. I’d have figured they’d have something similar if they hadn’t adopted it from their neighbours.
(Aussie here who has never been to either nation.)
Nick Fuentes—a known white nationalist, anti-semite and self-described incel who gained prominence by rallying the far-right around Donald Trump—has been charged with battery for allegedly spraying mace at a 57-year-old woman and pushing her down the stairs of his home in the suburbs of Chicago, according to documents obtained by The Smoking Gun.
The charge stems from an incident that occurred on November 10, when a resident of Fuentes’ town visited his residence. Marla Rose, a 57-year-old Berwyn, Illinois resident, learned where Fuentes lived after his address was published online—the result of widespread backlash against the bigot after he posted “Your body, my choice. Forever” on Twitter following Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 Presidential election.
Rose told Vice she initially only intended to visit the address and see if he had been subject to any protests or received any deliveries of diapers or menstrual products, as people online were threatening to do. Once she arrived, another person who seemed to be similarly curious about Fuentes’ home encouraged Rose to ring his doorbell and talk to him.
Rose said she intended to ask Fuentes, “Why do you feel comfortable saying the things that you say?” but he opened the door and immediately pepper sprayed her before she could confront him. He then allegedly pushed her down the three concrete steps that led to his door. “It was obvious he’s very scared, probably extremely paranoid,” she said to Vice. “I’m 5 foot 1. He’s not a big man himself, but I’m 57, he’s 26.”
Rose was taking a video recording with her phone during the incident, and Fuentes can be seen in the footage grabbing her phone from the ground, bringing it into his home, and stomping on it…
Lesson: if you video something for legal purposes, it should stream the video immediately to another site, not leave it on the camera.
An alternative healer who advocated “slapping therapy” to treat a range of maladies was sentenced Friday to 10 years in prison for the death of a 71-year-old diabetic woman who stopped taking insulin during one of his workshops.
Hongchi Xiao, 61, was convicted of manslaughter by gross negligence for failing to get medical help for Danielle Carr-Gomm as she howled in pain and frothed at the mouth during the fourth day of a workshop in October 2016.
Xiao, of Cloudbreak, California, promoted paida lajin therapy, getting patients to slap themselves repeatedly to release “poisonous waste” from the body. The technique has its roots in Chinese medicine but critics say it has no scientific basis and patients often end up with bruises, bleeding – or worse.
Carr-Gomm was one of two of Xiao’s patients who died…
Former President Barack Obama gave his first speech since the election at the Obama Foundation’s 2024 Democracy Forum on Thursday.
His speech, “On the Power of Pluralism,” was an appeal to the need for hope in the fight for democracy’s survival. Obama made it clear that while we need to forge alliances, sometimes with groups we didn’t entirely agree with, we absolutely must remember that our democracy “depends on everyone following a certain set of rules.”
To that end, the Republican Party’s actions in “actively suppressing votes or politicizing the armed forces, or using the judiciary or criminal justice system to go after opponents,” is a line in the sand.
“When that happens, we fight for what we believe in. … A line has been crossed and we have to stand up and speak out and organize and mobilize as forcefully as we can.”
“None of this will be easy,” Obama continued. “Building up these habits and practices that so often we’ve lost, learning to trust each other again, that’s a generational project.”
For those following the rapidly unfolding events in the latest chapter of the Syrian Civil War, the above map from wikipedia is by far the best I’ve seen so far. [Map at the link]
The big news today is that the remaining Assad loyalists have apparently given up on defending Homs, and are retreating in a panic back to the Alawite heartland of Lataikia and Tartus along the coast.
I would expect Damascus to fall within a few days at this point — particularly since the Druze and Kurdish led SDF have opened a new southern front that is already approaching Damascus from the south and east. […]
In the evening of 6 December 2024, opposition forces captured the regional capital of Suwayda, in southern Syria, following pro-government forces withdrawal from the city. Concurrently, SDF captured the provincial capital of Deir ez-Zor from pro-government forces, which also left the town of Palmyra in central Homs region. By midnight, opposition forces in the southern Daraa Governorate captured its capital Daraa, as well as 90% of the province, as pro-government forces withdrew towards the capital Damascus.
On 7 December 2024, pro-government forces withdrew from the Quneitra region, which borders the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. […]
More significantly, both Russia and Iran are urging their citizens in Syria to evacuate from Damascus while they still can — it looks like no one is going to be riding to Assad’s rescue this time.
[…] In view of today’s news about healthcare, it’s probably worth remembering that Musk has called for the elimination of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and that Project 2025 has called for making Medicare Advantage—the privatized Medicare in which UnitedHealth specializes—the default enrollment option for Medicare. This would essentially privatize Medicare for the 66 million people who use it, but since Medicare Advantage costs taxpayers about 6% more than Medicare, this would not create the savings Musk is supposed to be finding.
[…] There has always been an imbalance in the way the courts treat corporations and individuals. In theory, anyone can sue for redress of wrongs done; in practice, large corporations have endless resources and their victims generally have none. This is where the government is supposed to step in, as advocate for the people as a whole. That was the purpose of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: to put the wronged individual on a par with the wronging corporation. Other governmental agencies such as the EPA and the SEC serve the same purpose: to give power to the powerless against the powerful.
For several decades after FDR’s New Deal and World War II, the United States was working toward this balance. And for all those decades, the powerful have sought to reverse this progress. (Not for nothing was FDR called a “traitor to his class.”) Now the voters have been persuaded (bamboozled, to be precise) into putting the wild boars in charge of the hen house. (Sorry, foxes are too mild an analogy; besides, they’re cute.)
Corporate and billionaire greed isn’t the only catastrophe Trump is about to unleash. There is his racism. While we can’t really say whether racism elected Trump, his election gave him license to unleash his racism without bothering to disguise it. The racist ‘one-drop rule’ lives on in how Trump talks about Black politicians and whiteness in America. And it gives others license as well. Laura Ingraham: Trump Makes It Cool To Be Openly Racist And Homophobic Again. [embedded links are available at the main link.]
Ditto for his attacks on women: Donald Trump’s Second Administration Will Be As Women-Hating as Ever. And, again, his election gives others permission: ‘Your body, my choice’: Attacks on women surge on social media following election.
Then there are the religious fanatics who have backed Trump because they see him as their instrument to gain both political and cultural power. ‘Anointed by God’: The Christians who see Trump as their saviour. […]
Corporate greed. Racism. Misogyny. Religious intolerance. (That’s a partial list.) In case there was any doubt, Trump’s cabinet picks make it clear that these are his priorities — The Creep Cabinet Is No Accident; Project 2025, Mar-a-Lago and Fox News: What Connects Trump’s New Staff Picks — at least to the extent that they satisfy his base and keep him in power. Pete Hegseth embodies all of them.
– Corporate greed (or greed, generally): Hegseth faces news scrutiny over financial mismanagement accusations
– Racism: Pete Hegseth Accused of Being ‘White Supremacist’ By Civil Rights Lawyer
– Misogyny: Pete Hegseth’s mother begged him to “get some help” — he joined a misogynist church instead
– Religious intolerance: Pete Hegseth’s Crusade to Turn the Military into a Christian Weapon.
Any number of pundits and commentators have brought up the overall incompetence of the people Trump is choosing to help him run the government. But if they think that is a disqualifier, they miss the point: Trump chose them to help him run the government — into the ground, either through sheer incompetence (Hegseth, Gabbard) or else through competence at screwing the public (Musk, Ramaswarmy, McMahon). They will try to destroy the balance we have been working toward, leaving them free to exploit it without any interference from the government or the people the government was supposed to protect.
The Washington Post almost got this: “Trump has assembled an uber-wealthy Cabinet, raising risks of ethics conflicts.” It’s not a risk; it’s a certainty, and that’s why he picked them. […]
After the 2016 election, a movement that would become known as “the resistance” quickly emerged to protest and confront Donald Trump and his incoming administration. The hope was that if Trump could simply be held back — resisted — for four years, politics would go back to normal. A Democrat would retake the White House and Trump would be viewed as an unfortunate aberration.
Since Election Day, it has become fashionable in some circles to view that effort as a failure. The cynics dismiss the grassroots energy and the hard work of so many as naïve and without impact.
As usual, they are wrong. The resistance movement helped protect the Affordable Care Act from repeal and lead to bold policies at the state and local level. It built new pro-democracy institutions that challenged Trump in the courts and in the streets. It inspired thousands of new candidates to run for office and contributed to a successful mid-term election. Most importantly, in 2020 it helped defeat Donald Trump.
Amy Siskind:
UPDATE: please do not lose faith folks! Trump is being challenged at every turn!
* Gaetz out!
* Chronister out!
* Hegseth about to be out!
* several other cabinet picks in jeopardy
* forced to file ethics pledge
* forced to allow FBI background checks of candidates
* House balance now 217-215 with his cabinet picks (do nothing)
* big government union sign deal with Biden good til 2029
* two Democratic-appointed judges change their mind on retiring
* given a spanking by Mexico’s president on tariffs
We’ve now sent over 50,000 letters demanding Senators reject Trump’s unfit cabinet nominees, and to oppose recess appointments! Well done!
This is amazing progress in such a short time, and it’s exactly the level of energy we need to respond to the incoming orange monster.
Jennifer Rubin:
Hardly profiles in courage, Senate Republicans occasionally can be pushed to do the right thing. They rebuffed the nomination of Matt Gaetz for attorney general because congressional Republicans hated him and credible allegations about sex with minors proved too embarrassing. Well-founded allegations of sexual misconduct, drug or alcohol abuse or financial misconduct (and in the case of Pete Hegseth, all three!) — rather than a nominee’s loopy ideas (e.g., no women in combat) — seem to be effective motivators for GOP senators to oppose Trump nominees.
In short, the way to spur Republicans to nix the most objectionable and dangerous appointments is to appeal to Republicans’ political self-interest. Consider unhinged, vindictive characters such as Kash Patel, who can easily turn his ire on Republicans or their allies. Fear of malicious characters is not the exclusive province of Democrats. Reminding Republicans of Patel’s threats, insults and hostility demonstrated toward fellow Republicans (including former Trump advisers) may trigger their survival instinct.
Moreover, making the case to Republican senators that they will be responsible for the possible consequences of unfit nominees’ tenure (such as the return of polio without vaccines or a possible terrorist attack due to poor national security) should at least give them pause. The more serious the stakes (nuclear war, compromised intelligence), the more traction the objection is going to get.
In sum, if Republicans are convinced a nominee will embarrass them, threaten them and/or leave them holding the bag for a national disaster, they might reject at least a few of the worst picks. Alas, that still leaves us with the “merely” unqualified, conflicted and incompetent nominees.
One of Trump’s central campaign claims was that green energy and immigration pose a massive threat to American workers. But now it seems local Republicans think otherwise.
There are still nearly two months to go before Donald Trump assumes the presidency again, but Republicans or GOP-adjacent industries have already begun to admit out loud that some of his most important policy promises could prove disastrous in their parts of the country.
Now Republicans are declaring that repeal of the IRA is the thing that could create empty factories. Another Georgia GOP state lawmaker tells the Times that repealing tax credits encouraging the use of solar panels could make local manufacturing “jobs disappear.” House Republicans from districts benefiting from these investments are also primed to resist.
All this directly undercuts one of Trump’s biggest ideas—that government efforts to spur the transition to a sustainable future must by definition existentially threaten the working class, whose well-being depends on tripling down on fossil fuels—and exposes it as the monumental scam that it is.
If she becomes education secretary, Linda McMahon could revise Title IX rules that serve to protect students from sex discrimination, including sexual violence.
by Nadra Little, for The 19th
Education leaders and advocates are speaking out against Linda McMahon, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to become education secretary, as a sexual misconduct lawsuit involving the former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment Inc. (WWE) garners increased interest.
In October, attorneys filed a civil lawsuit on behalf of five men accusing McMahon and her husband, WWE co-founder Vince McMahon, of ignoring the sexual abuse by a male WWE employee that they endured as teen boys during the 1980s and 1990s. The men worked as “ring boys” who set up and broke down wrestling rings at WWE matches. They allege that WWE officials knew about the abuse they experienced but did not intervene.
“The sexual misconduct lawsuit — it’s going to get a lot of scrutiny, and I’m very troubled by those allegations,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, the labor union representing 1.8 million members. “She’s going to have to respond to them, about whether or not she was complicit in hiding or in covering up sexual assault. How can you be the head of education in America [with these allegations]? It’s antithetical, right?”
[snipped denial from McMahon’s attorney]
Along with administering federal funding, guaranteeing all students equal access to education, and ensuring schools comply with the law, the Department of Education issues updates to Title IX, a civil rights statute that prevents federally funded schools from practicing sex discrimination, which includes sexual misconduct. The accusations against McMahon have raised questions about whether she’s capable of keeping students safe. School personnel such as teachers and principals are mandated reporters, meaning they have a legal obligation to report suspected cases of child abuse and neglect to the authorities. But McMahon has no classroom experience […]
The record of Betsy DeVos, education secretary during [Trump’s first term] has only added to the concerns about McMahon since DeVos was widely criticized for making Title IX revisions that created barriers for students trying to report sexual misconduct. The DeVos guidelines allowed schools to dismiss all but the most severe complaints of sexual harassment, subject complainants to live hearings with cross examinations, ignore cases of sexual violence involving students that occurred off campus, and drag out sexual misconduct investigations for so long that, in some cases, students graduated before action was taken. [Delay tactics.]
In the spring, President Joe Biden’s administration issued new Title IX guidelines that strengthened protections for survivors, but their advocates fear these gains will be reversed during the second Trump administration. […]
For organizations dedicated to ending sexual violence on K-12 and college campuses, McMahon’s nomination comes as a blow.
Kenyora Parham, CEO of End Rape On Campus, a nonprofit working to end campus sexual violence by supporting survivors, prevention education, and policy reform, told The 19th in a statement that she is outraged that McMahon could be the next education secretary. She urged policymakers and fellow advocates to mobilize against her nomination.
The allegations against her are “not only appalling but disqualifying for a role that demands the utmost integrity and commitment to student safety,” Parham said. “This nomination is a blatant and dangerous move by the Trump administration, signaling a calculated agenda to dismantle the protections afforded by Title IX. […]
Emma Grasso Levine, senior manager of Title IX policy and programs at Know Your IX, a project focused on ending gender-based and sexual violence in schools, said that she’s extremely concerned [about] McMahon’s nomination […] “someone who is not qualified to lead the Department of Education, whose role, as instructed by the incoming administration, may be to reduce funding or dismantle staffing and key functions of that department that are meant to protect student civil rights.”
Trump has repeatedly said that he will eliminate the Department of Education. On Thursday, Sen. Mike Rounds, a Republican representing South Dakota, initiated the process by introducing the “Returning Education to Our States Act” to disband the federal agency. The president-elect also wants to privatize education by increasing students’ access to taxpayer-funded vouchers that would cover some of their expenses at independent secular and religious schools. As chair of the board of the America First Policy Institute, which promotes Trump’s public policy proposals, McMahon has worked toward privatization.
[…] McMahon said that she had a bachelor’s degree in education when her degree is actually in French.
McMahon has also sat on the trustee board of Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut, off and on since 2004. The Catholic institution announced in 2012 that it was naming its student commons building in the billionaire’s honor following her $5 million gift to the university during one of her two failed bids to become a U.S. senator representing Connecticut. […]
Her job, in Trump’s administration, is to do whatever she can to make public education worse so states can supplant it with vouchers for private schools and home schools.
[…] The Russians are already wanting to negotiate with the Syrian rebels and throw Assad under the bus. This should be a lesson in how to bring Russia to the negotiating table — by kicking their asses.
Assad didn’t wait around to see if he would end up like Gaddafi in Libya.
By the time you read this, the rebels may have taken the presidential palace. When the fall comes, it comes in a hurry. […]
Without Syria, Russian operations in Africa would face a critical sustainment gap, with no viable alternatives for logistical continuity. The Navy would also struggle to offset the loss of the Syria-Africa air corridor, further weakening force projection.
🔥🔥🔥 Assad’s Regime is falling. Syrian soldiers in Damascus are changing into civilian clothes and abandoning their uniforms. [video at the link] https://x.com/officejjsmart/status/1865412899247624396 [Also available at the DailyKos link.}
President-elect Trump and first lady Jill Biden attended the reopening of the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, sitting in the same row during the ceremony.
The cathedral reopened on Saturday after it suffered a devastating fire in the spring of 2019, causing its spire and wooden latticework of its roof to collapse.
During the ceremony, Trump sat in the front row between French President Emmanuel Macron and French first lady Brigitte Macron. On the other side of the French first lady, Jill Biden sat with her daughter, Ashley Biden, to her right. Trump and Jill Biden were photographed speaking when Brigitte Macron wasn’t in her seat. [photo at the link]
[…] Trump was greeted by the Macrons when he arrived for the ceremony, which was shortly after Trump, Macron and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met at Élysée Palace.
Trump shook hands with Prince William inside the cathedral while going to his seat. The two are expected to meet after the ceremony, BBC reported.
Jill and Ashley Biden then arrived and were greeted by the Macrons. Macron gave the first lady a warm hug after she first embraced his wife. The White House said Friday that President Biden couldn’t go due to a scheduling conflict.
Other attendees included billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk and former Secretary of State John Kerry. Trump and the first lady’s motorcades were parked next to each other at the cathedral, according to reporters traveling with Biden.
Following the ceremony, the Macrons hosted a reception at Élysée Palace.
Bringing bird poop to school is usually frowned upon, but middle schoolers in Chicago are being celebrated as “bonafide biomedical scientists” after one student delivered some special goose droppings to their science club.
With the supervision of researchers from the University of Illinois, this student carefully isolated a bacterium from the goose poop that showed antibiotic activity.
A natural compound produced by this bacterium is wholly new to science, and in the lab, it shows cancer-fighting properties…
The student that brought in the goose feces was able to isolate a species of gram-negative bacteria, Pseudomonas idahonensis. In the lab, researchers found this bacterium could inhibit more than 90 percent of the growth of a gram-positive bacteria species that can cause skin infections.
“Efforts are underway to determine the compound(s) responsible for the original antibiotic activity observed,” the team writes in a published and peer-reviewed paper on the discovery…
The Pseudomonas bacterium not only showed antibiotic properties, it also produced a novel natural product, called orfamide N, which has not been seen by scientists before. Previously discovered orfamides are known to have useful medical properties, so the team investigated this one further.
In the lab, orfamide N slowed the growth of melanoma and ovarian cancer cells…
The backpack recovered by the NYPD that allegedly belonged to the suspect wanted in the shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, only had two items inside: a Tommy Hilfiger jacket and Monopoly money, sources with knowledge of the ongoing investigation told ABC News Saturday.
The NYPD believes it is making good progress toward identifying the suspect but, as of Saturday evening, no identification has been made, sources told ABC News…
Investigators believe they were able to score DNA samples from several pieces of evidence discovered at or near the crime scene, law enforcement sources told ABC News. The samples are currently at the NYC Office of the Chief Medical Examiner to be run through databases for a possible match — a process that could take several days, the sources said.
Police were also able to extract a fingerprint off a water bottle the suspect bought at a Starbucks, but the print is smudged so it’s not clear how helpful it will be, sources said.
CEDAR PARK, Texas — A 17-year-old girl faces felony charges after allegedly killing a classmate’s show goat with pesticide at Vista Ridge High School, according to an arrest affidavit.
The incident occurred on October 23 at the school’s barn facility in Cedar Park, where security footage showed a female student administering a toxic pesticide to a goat using a drench gun, police said. The goat, named Willie, died approximately 21 hours later after experiencing symptoms including convulsions and respiratory distress.
According to the affidavit, the suspect, identified as Aubrey Vanlandingham, confessed to police that she deliberately poisoned the goat because she believed the animal’s owner’s daughter was “a cheater.” Police say Vanlandingham admitted this was her second attempt to poison the animal…
Ancient fossil beans about the size of modern limes, and among the largest seeds in the fossil record, may provide new insight into the evolution of today’s diverse Southeast Asian and Australian rainforests, according to Penn State researchers who identified the plants.
They discovered that the fossils represent a now extinct legume genus that lived in Southeast Asia that was closely related to modern Castanospermum, known as the black bean tree. This tree is only found today in the coastal rainforests of northern Australia and neighboring islands. The team, which also included paleontologists based in Indonesia, Canada, the United Kingdom and elsewhere in the United States, reported their findings in the International Journal of Plant Sciences.
The fossils, discovered in Indonesian Borneo, date back to the Eocene period approximately 34 to 40 million years ago. They suggest that the ancestors of the black bean tree migrated from Asia into Australia during the tectonic-plate collision that brought the landmasses together and allowed for an exchange of plants and animals between the continents. The collision of the Southeast Asian and Australian tectonic plates, which began about 20 million years ago and continues today, led to a large exchange of plant and animal species between the landmasses, the scientists said.
The findings provide the first macrofossil evidence of a plant lineage moving from Asia into Australia after the Asia-Australia tectonic collision, the researchers said. The fossils are also the oldest definite fossil legumes — the bean family — from the Malay Archipelago and the first fossil record anywhere of plants related to the black bean tree…
The location of Syrian President Bashad al-Assad was not immediately known.
Rebel fighters claimed they captured the Syrian capital of Damascus early Sunday as government forces loyal to the country’s president, Bashar al-Assad, were routed in a mater of days.
The rebels’ claim would open a new chapter in the 13-year-long civil war that has ravaged the ancient land.
“We declare the city of Damascus free from the tyrant Bashar al-Assad,” Hassan Abdul-Ghani, senior commander of the militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, known as HTS, said in a post on WhatsApp. “To the displaced people around the world, Free Syria awaits you.”
[…] Assad’s location was not immediately known. Multiple media reports indicate he has left Damascus, and Abdul-Ghani said Assad had fled. NBC News has not confirmed his departure or whereabouts.
Amid reports that Assad left the capital, Syria’s prime minister, Ghazi al-Jalali, said he is in his home and does not intend to leave “except in a peaceful manner that ensures the continued functioning of public institutions and state facilities, promoting security and reassurance for our fellow citizens.”
[Assad’s family has ruled Syria for more than 50 years if you count Assad’s father before him. Assad himself has ruled as brutal dictator, frequently killing his own people. The family has also controlled most of the public institutions and state facilities, so I predict a period of intense chaos is going to follow all of this rapid change.]
He said the government is ready to cooperate with “any leadership chosen by the Syrian people.”
HTS General Command said it also freed the people being held in Sednaya Prison. The Syrian government has detained thousands at the military prison on the outskirts of Damascus, according to Reuters.
[…]
The sudden takeover of the capital by HTS militants was seen as a blow to the outside forces that have enabled Assad to cling to power for 24 years — Russia, Iran and Iranian-backed Hezbollah. [They were already weakened. Now they are weaker.]
President Joe Biden was monitoring the events in Syria and “staying in constant touch with regional partners,” White House National Security Council spokesman Sean Savett said in a statement.
In a post on his Truth Social platform Saturday morning, President-elect Donald Trump said in all capital letters that the United States should “have nothing to do with” the situation in Syria. “This is not our fight. Let it play out.” [Trump is a doofus. He should stay out of everything.]
Damascus fell not long after rebels on Friday besieged the Syrian city of Homs with a rapid assault on government forces that left three of the country’s five largest cities in their hands and nothing to stop them from marching on the Syrian capital. HTS rebels claimed Saturday ET that they had captured the city, a day after also claiming to have seized the city of Daraa.
The U.S., which has about 900 American troops in northern Syria, has been closely monitoring developments in the country.
In less than two weeks, the HTS rebels were also able to capture the city of Aleppo in the north, as well as the central city of Hama, where government forces were forced out Thursday. [In part, the rapid advance of rebels was made possible by the fact that the Syrian military melted away.]
The HTS attack on Aleppo was the first opposition assault on the city since 2016, when a brutal air campaign by Russian warplanes helped Assad retake control of Aleppo.
[…] HTS grew out of the former Al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra and is designated as a terrorist organization by the United States and the United Nations. [There are reports that HTS renounced Al Qaeda, and have been presenting a more moderate stance, however HTS is a conservative Islamist organization.]
[…] The recent battlefield successes of HTS are the culmination of four years of trying to turn the rebel forces into a force capable of challenging Assad’s army and equipping them with drones and other high-tech weapons of war, experts have said.
“The expansion of units … along with large-scale indigenous rocket and missile production — has created a force that Assad’s regime has seriously struggled to defend against, let alone outmaneuver,” said Charles Lister, director of the Syria program at the Middle East Institute, a Washington-based think tank, in a post on X.
Video is available at the link.
Bekenstein Boundsays
Monopoly money … symbolic in some way?
KGsays
Lynna, OM@251,
The speed with which Assad’s regime disintegrated has taken everyone by surprise – including those who overthrew it, it seems. It’s hard to be optimistic about a peaceful transition, or one to anything like democracy, given that HTS and its leader (who are playing nice at present) were until 2017 affiliated to al-Qaeda, and the likelihood of continuing meddling by outside forces (Russia, Turkey, Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia, UAE…). With regard to Russia, a key issue is whether Putin will try to hang on to the Russian military bases: Hmeimim airbase in Syria’s Latakia province and the naval facility at Tartous on the coast. These, I believe, are in the one part of Syria which might remain loyal to Assad (or might have, if he hadn’t apparently fled the country), as it’s principally inhabited by members of his Alawite sect. My guess is that Putin will try to come to terms with HTS to keep the bases in return for supporting the new regime. Turkey’s Erdoğan will be even keener than before to slaughter Kurds and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces – which Trump is likely to abandon. Netanyahu will be delighted at present as Assad’s overthrow is a severe blow to Iran and Hezbollah, but could easily find himself facing a more aggressive Syria – Assad tried to avoid direct confrontation with Israel.
Here’s the Guardian’s Syria liveblog from last night and this morning. It was quite something to follow in real time! I had to return to news coverage this week. While I hadn’t planned to do it exactly one month after the election, there was too much happening – Syria, South Korea, Romania, Georgia, France,…!
Anyway, I hope everyone here has been OK! I’ve been thinking of joining Bluesky… I likely will, but I would be interested to hear people’s experiences or cautions.
South Korean prosecutors have arrested ex-defence minister Kim Yong-hyun over his alleged role in President Yoon Suk Yeol’s declaration of martial law on Tuesday, local media has reported.
Kim, who offered his resignation on Wednesday, was seen as a central figure in Tuesday’s brief martial law declaration. A senior military official and filings to impeach Yoon by opposition members said Kim had made the proposal to Yoon…
This won’t be cleared up until Yoon is gone – either resignation or impeachment.
Romania: Tim Ross and Andrei Popoviciu of POLITICO Europe explain why Romania’s Constitutional Court has abruptly canceled Romania’s presidential election.
This Sunday, Romanians were due to vote in the second-round runoff election for their next president. They had two candidates to pick from: center-right small-town mayor Elena Lasconi; or Călin Georgescu, a far-right independent who was catapulted from obscurity into the lead in the first round of voting on Nov. 24.
On Friday, Romania’s Constitutional Court decided the first round of the election was so badly damaged — by an alleged Russian operation to influence the result — that the whole process needed to be scrapped and started again.
Current President Klaus Iohannis has been forced to extend his term, political candidates are trying to regroup and preparing to rerun their expensive campaigns, and millions of voters are wondering whether they can trust the process at all.
No date has yet been set for the new votes — but that will have to happen soon.
Israel said Sunday that it had entered a demilitarized buffer zone in the Golan Heights, abutting Syrian-held territory, amid a lightning fast rebel offensive that swept across Syria and drove President Bashar al-Assad from power.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, announced that he had ordered troops to “take over the buffer zone” between the countries. He also said Israeli forces had taken up military posts abandoned by Syrian troops, without specifying whether they had entered Syrian territory.
“We gave the Israeli army the order to take over these positions to ensure that no hostile force embeds itself right next to the border of Israel. This is a temporary defensive position until a suitable arrangement is found,” said Mr. Netanyahu.
The Israeli military said it was “not interfering with the internal events in Syria.” But it added that its forces would “continue to operate as long as necessary in order to preserve the buffer zone and defend Israel and its civilians.”
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an independent monitor, said Israeli tanks and armored vehicles had been deployed in Quneitra, a border region. But it remained unclear whether they had actually entered Syrian-controlled territory or remained in the zone between the two sides.
Israeli officials and analysts have voiced concern that the fall of Mr. Assad’s government could empower militant groups who seek to carry out attacks against Israel. But while Mr. Netanyahu insisted that the deployment was temporary, it could also raised concerns that Israel might trying to capitalize on the instability in Syria.
Israel captured the Golan Heights during the Middle East war of 1967. Israel annexed much of the territory in 1981 and the rest is controlled by Syria. Most of the world views this area as Israeli-occupied Syrian territory, though former President Donald J. Trump recognized Israeli sovereignty there in 2019.
The Israeli operation announced on Sunday aimed to position its forces between Syrian rebel groups that have taken control of parts of the Golan Heights controlled by Syria and Israeli communities on the border of the Israeli-controlled part of the territory.
The Golan Regional Council, a local government entity which supervises Israeli settlements in the Golan Heights, said that a wide-scale military operation had started early in the morning and told residents that it would affect some roads and agricultural areas.
The Israeli military announced that two agricultural areas would become closed military zones and that schools in four communities would do distance learning for the time being.
Trump vowed to launch a mass deportation effort, impose tariffs and pardon many convicted in the Jan. 6 attack in an interview with “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker.
Video at the link.
[…] Trump vowed to make immediate and sweeping changes after he takes office on Jan. 20, such as pardons for those convicted in the attack on the U.S. Capitol, and said he wants to find a legislative solution to keep Dreamers in the country legally.
In an interview with Kristen Welker, moderator of NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” Trump also said he’ll work to extend the tax cuts passed in his first term. He said he will not seek to impose restrictions on abortion pills. He plans to deport millions of undocumented immigrants and try to end birthright citizenship. And he said the pardons for Jan. 6 rioters will happen on day one, arguing many have endured overly harsh treatment in prison.
“These people are living in hell,” he said.
Trump’s first postelection network television interview took place Friday at Trump Tower in Manhattan, where he spoke for more than an hour about policy plans Americans can expect in his next term.
Trump said he would fulfill a campaign promise to levy tariffs on imports from America’s biggest trading partners. In a noteworthy moment, he conceded uncertainty when Welker asked if he could “guarantee American families won’t pay more” as a result of his plan.
Trump also said he will not raise the age for government programs like Social Security and Medicare and will not make cuts to them as part of spending reduction efforts led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. Asked if “raising ages or any of that stuff” was “off the table,” Trump agreed, saying, “I won’t do it.”
[…] He seemed heartened by the scope of his victory on Nov. 5. After winning the popular vote and capturing all seven of the key battleground states, he said with pride, “I’m getting called by everybody.”
He’s heard from Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and owner of The Washington Post: “We’re having dinner,” he said.
“People like me now, you know?” he said, adding: “It’s different than the first — you know, when I won the first time, I wasn’t nearly as popular as this. And one thing that’s very important, in terms of the election, I love that I won the popular vote, and by a lot.”
Trump did segue into familiar grievances. He would not concede that he lost the 2020 election. Asked how, in his view, Democrats stole that election but not this one even though they control the White House, Trump said, “Because I think it was too big to rig.”
He blamed President Joe Biden for the nation’s political divide and heaped insults on perceived foes. Adam Schiff, the incoming Democratic senator from California, is “a real lowlife,” he said.
But he delivered something of a mixed message when it comes to political retribution. Trump made clear he believes he’s been wronged, but he also sounded a conciliatory note, saying he will not appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Biden. “I’m not looking to go back into the past,” he said. “Retribution will be through success.”
A fear among Trump’s political opponents is that he’ll use the government’s fearsome investigative machinery to exact vengeance. He has chosen two allies for top law enforcement positions: Pam Bondi for attorney general and Kash Patel for FBI director. If confirmed, Trump suggested, they’d have autonomy in how they go about enforcing the law.
Yet he also singled out people he believes crossed the line in investigating his actions, calling special counsel Jack Smith “very corrupt.”
Members of the House committee that examined the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol were “political thugs and, you know, creeps,” committing offenses in going about their work, he said.
“For what they did, honestly, they should go to jail,” Trump said.
Asked if he would direct the Justice Department and FBI to punish them, Trump said, “No, not at all. I think that they’ll have to look at that, but I’m not going to — I’m going to focus on drill, baby, drill” — a reference to tapping more oil supplies.
If Biden wants to do it, he could pardon the committee members, Trump said, “and maybe he should.”
[…] He said he would consider raising the federal minimum wage, which has been $7.25 an hour since 2009, but would like to consult with the nation’s governors. “I will agree, it’s a very low number,” he said.
He said he’ll release his full medical records. Trump will be 82 by the time his term ends in 2029 — the same age Biden is now. He said he doesn’t plan to divest from Truth Social, the billion-dollar platform he launched after leaving office. “I don’t know what’s to divest,” he said. “All I do is I put out messages.” And he said he will not try to replace Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, whom he has criticized in the past.
He said his children won’t join him as White House aides, a departure from his last term, when daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner both served as senior advisers with West Wing offices. “I’ll miss them,” he said. He didn’t address a question about what role his wife, Melania Trump, will play in the new term, though he described the future first lady as both “very elegant” and “very popular.”
Immigration was the centerpiece of Trump’s campaign, and he didn’t flinch in saying he will carry out mass deportation of those who are living in the country illegally.
First will be convicted criminals, he said. Pressed on whether the targets would go beyond that group, Trump added: “Well, I think you have to do it, and it’s a hard — it’s a very tough thing to do. It’s — but you have to have, you know, you have rules, regulations, laws. They came in illegally.”
It’s also possible that American citizens will be caught up in the sweep and deported with family members who are here illegally, or could choose to go.
Asked about families with mixed immigration status, where some are in the U.S. legally and some illegally, Trump said, “I don’t want to be breaking up families, so the only way you don’t break up the family is you keep them together and you have to send them all back.”
The expense and logistical complexities of deporting millions of people haven’t deterred him, he said.
“You have no choice,” he said. “First of all, they’re costing us a fortune. But we’re starting with the criminals, and we’ve got to do it. And then we’re starting with the others, and we’re going to see how it goes.”
An exception might be the “Dreamers” — people who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children and have lived here for years. He voiced openness toward a legislative solution that would allow them to remain in the country.
“I will work with the Democrats on a plan,” he said, praising “Dreamers” who’ve gotten good jobs, started businesses and become successful residents. “We’re going to have to do something with them,” he said.
He also said he intends to eliminate birthright citizenship, the protection enshrined in the 14th Amendment that guarantees citizenship to anyone born on U.S. soil regardless of their parents. Asked about the likelihood that doing so unilaterally would face legal opposition, Trump said he would consider amending the Constitution.
“We’ll maybe have to go back to the people,” Trump said. “But we have to end it.”
During Trump’s one debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, he was criticized for saying he had “concepts of a plan” to replace the Affordable Care Act, the health care law signed by President Barack Obama.
[…] In the interview with “Meet the Press,” Trump said he is actively trying to end the war, “if I can,” adding that Ukraine can “possibly” expect it won’t get as much military aid from the U.S. when he’s back in office.
He would not commit to keeping the U.S. in NATO, the European military alliance that has been a bulwark against Russia since World War II. “If they pay their bills, absolutely,” he would preserve America’s role in the alliance, he said. […]
Trump is a liar, and he changes his mind about policy goals every other day, so who knows what he will do and what he won’t do. He does seem to be more consistent when it comes to immigration … and that’s bad news.
We are here to see more than 2,500 transgenic chestnut seedlings at a seed farm belonging to American Castanea, a new biotech startup…
Covers several important developments in American chestnut tree restoration:
American Castanea, a “public benefit corporation” startup
Breadtree Farms, a company hoping to process chestnuts
The “DarWin” GMO trees
And besides, he says, they’ve got a potentially better strain coming: the DarWin. The “Win” stands for “wound-inducible.” In these trees, the anti-blight action turns on—is induced—only when the tree’s bark is wounded, working something like an animal’s immune response. This could be more efficient than continuously expressing the anti-blight gene, the way Darling-54 does. So DarWin trees might reserve more of their energy to grow and produce nuts…
To reply to just one of the deeply ignorant things Trump said in that interview: he claimed that no other countries confer birthright citizenship.
33 nations have birthright citizenship.
Birthright citizenship is a governmental policy under which any child born within a country’s borders or territory is automatically granted citizenship in that country—even if their parents are not citizens. At present, 33 countries in the world (and two territories) have unrestricted birthright citizenship, also known as jus soli, and another 32 nations have some form of restricted birthright citizenship […]
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau seems to have drawn the short straw among G7 leaders and was the first to put on a happy face for a meeting with the vengeful Florida Man poised to make everything suck again.
Trudeau, along with his chief of staff Katie Telford and public safety minister Dominic LeBlanc, broke bread at Mar-a-Lago last week in an attempt at a charm offensive with the deeply offensive president-elect, who has vowed one of his first executive orders will be to hit Canada and Mexico with a bonkers 25 percent tariff on all imports because the two countries are handy scapegoats for Fox News viewers to believe are to blame for America’s drug and illegal immigration problems. The self-inflicted wound is estimated to cost $251 billion to America’s annual GDP and the loss of nearly two million domestic jobs. Maybe Elon can find the difference under the sofa cushions.
In a post on the failing Nazi social media platform that isn’t X, Dear Leader elaborated on his concept of a plan to ruin the economies of three North American nations:
This Tariff will remain in effect until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country!
The surprise visit wasn’t mentioned in the PM’s posted daily itinerary — unlike his presser the same day with the premier of PEI announcing the expansion of a Tim Walzian free school lunch program — and Fox News (no link obv) was the first to report on the surreptitious surf and turf summit meeting where the Canuck contingent politely tried to get it through Donald J. Trump’s thick skull that there are better solutions than mutually assured destruction.
Don Trump responded that his country’s largest trading partner could become America’s 51st state if unable to meet his demands. [Soon after, one of Trump’s audiences chanted, “51!”] Essentially: “Canada is a nice little country, it would be a shame if anything were to happen to it.” Nervous laughter reportedly ensued.
I’ve no idea how many theoretical Electoral College votes Canada would be granted, but it’s worth noting the Great White North isn’t exactly a fertile red state in waiting. The country’s two Trump hotels quickly went bust, and (sorry) 64 percent of Canadians hoped to see Kamala Harris in the Oval Office to just 21 percent in favor of the Worst President Ever […] Even 42 percent of supporters of “Canada’s Trump,” Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, would’ve preferred the veep to the creep.
Trump perhaps thinks his northern counterpart has a Stop Fentanyl Shipments button at his desk like the ones used to summon summon Diet Cokes or sharks with laser beams attached to their heads. Not unlike the Very Large Faucet able to solve California’s water shortage he imagines is hidden in an undisclosed location somewhere in the Canadian Rockies.
Never mind that the border along the 49th parallel accounted for only 0.08 per cent of all fentanyl seizures this past year, up an alarming 0.006 percent from 2023, according to data from the Deep State US Customs and Border Protection. Or that it makes about as much sense as blaming Terrence and Philip.
Someone at the table pointed out Canadians generally lean left […] to which wise King Solomon declared the country could simply be split into TWO states, and maybe Trudeau could be governor of the cool one. Which would definitely have to include Quebec because most people there hate Trump even more than they do being part of Canada.
As always when this lunatic says something crazy, it was immediately treated as just a lulz. Remember when he suggested the US should do less testing for COVID-19 because it meant finding out how many people were dying from COVID-19, and the usual suspects insisted he was just trying to inject some humor, forcing him to clarify he totally wasn’t kidding? Good times! We now have the term “sanewashing” thanks to him but at this point there should be a subgenre for spinning arglebargle attempts at comedy. Funny-laundering could work. “I’m here all week, try the bleach!”
“The president was telling jokes, the president was teasing us, it was, of course, in no way a serious comment,” said LeBlanc […] “The fact that there’s a warm, cordial relationship between the two leaders and the president is able to joke like that, we think, is a positive thing.” he added in an interview with the Ceeb.
That warm and cordial relationship took a twist a few days later when the seditious supervillain inexplicably posted this: [image at the link]
Le sigh. It’s hard to choose which is dumber: posting an AI doodle of a man who struggles with stairs having reached the summit in a business suit or that the mountain he’s facing is clearly Switzerland’s Matterhorn. Rightwingers seem to have peaky blinders on when it comes to the most recognizable member of the Alps given Peewee also recently misused it for the “Common Sense Conservatives” hockey jerseys he’s hawking online.
But at least Trump didn’t try any good ones about him being the bastard son of Fidel Castro again. Or not within earshot. Trump has previously called his once and future frenemy “very weak and dishonest,” and former national security adviser John Bolton wrote in his memoir that his horrible boss only “tolerated” Trudeau, and that personal dislike “made it a lot harder to get things done.”
Which could have something to do with the 6’2” Trudeau’s habit of appearing to be taller than the 6’3” Very Stable Genius in photos of them standing beside each other. It’s possible he also saw the ones of Melon looking at JT thirstily when they first met and it shrunk his little mushroom peen. Or, even more painful, photos of Ivanka doing the same. [Embedded links available at the main link]
The King of the North has taken a lot of heat in the days since for seeming to bend the knee and coming home from Mar-a-Lago with nothing to show for it like a common Morning Joe — unless maybe he found some classified documents still hidden in the can — but I think accepting the invitation was more out of patriotism. Trudeau knows damn well he’s a lame duck whose time in power is coming to an end — as most certainly does Trump — barring some miracle but he ALSO knows how susceptible the demented narcissist is to flattery. A return to normalish bilateral relations could be as simple as sucking it up, laying on the charm, and lying to the dumb motherfucker’s face about what a Very Special Boy he is. […]
“Who’s the Most Powerful Man in the World? You are! Who’s your little buddy? Canada!”
Justin Trudeau is, after all, physically a big strong guy not unlike the ones Trump claims are constantly coming up to him in gratitude for doing such a tremendous job with tears in their eyes. […]
Former Syrian President Assad has landed in Moscow after fleeing from opposition rebels who closed in on Damascus today, according to Russia 24.
The state-owned TV channel cited anonymous sources in its report, adding that Assad has requested asylum in Russia. Two other Russian news outlets, TASS and Interfax, also reported that Assad arrived in Moscow with his family, citing Kremlin sources.
TASS and RIA Novosti, another Russian state news agency, reported that Assad’s request for asylum was granted for “humanitarian reasons.”
“She Revolutionized Medicine. Why Isn’t She a Household Name?”
[…] Determined to train as a physician at the highest level, in 1868 Mary Putnam — a daughter of the prominent New York publisher George Palmer Putnam — was the first woman to persuade the Sorbonne to admit her to its medical school. With one exam left to take as the Second Empire fell, she elected to stay in Paris through the siege.
Back in America, she became a fiercely uncompromising professor of medicine and practitioner of women’s health care alongside her mentors Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell at their New York Infirmary and its affiliated Women’s Medical College.
Ignoring the general assumption that someone unwomanly enough to pursue a medical career couldn’t possibly attract a husband, Putnam married the pioneering pediatrician Abraham Jacobi, capturing his heart with her research in cardiology and ignoring the antisemitism that came with her choice.
In 1876, she was the first woman to win Harvard’s prestigious Boylston Medical Prize. The provocative essay topic — “Do women require mental and bodily rest during menstruation?” — was central to the larger women’s rights movement.
Womanhood itself was considered a kind of pathology; how could women claim equality if their own bodies betrayed them every month? Putnam Jacobi’s meticulously argued conclusion — that menstruation is an aspect of health, not illness — turned the prevailing wisdom upside down.
She did it with data, sending out questionnaires asking respondents about their periods. How long did they bleed and how much? Did it hurt? How far could they walk? How many hours did they spend at work? In school? She recorded volunteers’ heart rate, muscle strength, temperature.
Menstruation was no obstacle to achievement, Putnam Jacobi confirmed, nor did gynecological problems result from female ambition. Using the mind did not steal vital energy from the womb and the men who insisted on this zero-sum connection were, as she wrote with trademark tartness, reducing women “to the anatomical level of the crustacea.”
(During this year of intense research, not incidentally, she gave birth to a healthy baby boy.)
In her own practice, she battled the misogyny of celebrity doctors like S. Weir Mitchell, a champion of the rest cure, who treated his affluent clientele of “neurasthenic” ladies with isolation, bed rest, massage, force-feeding, electric shocks and his own domineering charisma. He sent them home with instructions to “live as domestic a life as possible” — exactly the kind of stifling existence that made his patients unwell in the first place.
One of them, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, would write “The Yellow Wallpaper,” a horror story born of her own treatment that became a classic early-feminist text. In a satisfying turn, Gilman’s work inspired Putnam Jacobi to offer her medical services. Her prescription of study, drawing, writing and — delightfully — basketball restored her famous patient’s sense of agency.
Outside the consulting room, Putnam Jacobi worked to improve lives on a scale far beyond the individual, galvanizing a network of powerful friends into underwriting the admission of female students to medical schools and lending her strategic mind to the suffrage movement.
There was tragedy. Her beloved son died, aged 8, from diphtheria, while her husband, the pre-eminent expert on the disease, stood by, powerless to save him in an era before vaccines. Her final published paper, written in her early 60s, was titled “Description of the Early Symptoms of the Meningeal Tumor Compressing the Cerebellum, From Which the Author Died. Written by Herself.” It’s hard to imagine a more complete commitment to medicine.
[…] “The Cure for Women” [a book by Lydia Reeder] reintroduces its subject as a hero for this moment. With relentless hard work, hard science and sharp analysis, Putnam Jacobi changed the ancient narrative that men had written for women. Writing a better narrative for women remains an urgent task.
But in a sign of the potential danger Israel feels from unknown rulers in Damascus, Netanyahu said that he had ordered the military to seize the buffer zone that separates the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights from the rest of Syria.
“Together with the Defense Minister, and with full backing from the Cabinet, I directed the IDF yesterday to take control of the buffer zone and the dominant positions near it,” he said while visiting the Golan Heights. “We will not allow any hostile force to establish itself on our border.”
Israel is using the collapse of Assad’s rule to grab Syrian territory. With no government in Syria nobody is defending it’s borders and any new government isn’t going to be in a position to do anything about this.
birgerjohanssonsays
Storm Darragh has caused much damage in Britain.
Capel Curig in north Wales recorded wind speeds of 96mph on Saturday,
I was searching for responses to the Orange Sphincter’s invasion of Notre Dame. I was aghast at the mealy-mouthed sphincter kissing headlines by the main-slime news articles
The video of his thug-like handshake with Macron the Chameleon made me cringe (due to the actions of both of them).
I’d be interested to read the comments by the thoughtful people here.
The new xtian terrorist plans to implement the New Dark Ages are scary.
birgerjohanssonsays
Terry Talks Movies:
“These Movies Are Sure To Challenge Everyone!”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=VK2Xvw3krrg&si=0M90npKIWzgdSCBQ
“Keeper Of the Flame” from 1943 with Spencer Tracy/ Hepburn is extremely relevant for the current American political situation.
“I Saw the TV Glow” is weird, with a trans element.
“Heretic” with evil Hugh Grant reveals the One True Religion. The end can be interpreted two ways (but in both, the surviving victims are likely to get saved).
“My Old Ass.” Elder protagonist time travels to younger protagonist: “avoid anyone named Chad”.
Events in Syria have been moving rapidly. Today the Syrian rebels marched into Latakia and Tartus on the coast. Tartus is the home of Russia’s Mediterranean fleet and reports indicate its ships, which include cruise missile frigates and submarines, have left the port.
There are also reports of pockets of Russian soldiers being cut off along the coast.
[…] now it’s Tear Down the Statues Day across Syria. This one is of Hafez al-Assad in Tartus. [video at the link]
[…] Assad collected luxury vehicles the way Imelda Marcos collected shoes. I especially like the Lamborghini Diablo. [video at the link]
[…] Russian bloggers are following the withdrawal.
Our bases in Syria have finally received an order to destroy heavy armored vehicles and all accompanying documentation. No one will evacuate anything. And it is impossible. The main thing is to prevent it from falling into the hands of the Barmaleys. By the way, there are also strongholds with personnel who quickly ended up in the Barmaleys’ rear and what to do with them now is still unclear. Columns of the Barmaleys also broke into Latakia and calmly overcame those very insurmountable mountains that were supposed to protect our bases and port. The local population greets them as heroes. I hope a wise politician will guess to take all the ships out to sea, otherwise the Barmaleys and, consequently, the Turks may get the carriers of the Kalibr and Zircon missiles.
[…] President Zelensky reports Ukraine has lost 43,000 soldiers since the start of the war, with 370,000 cases of medical assistance for the wounded, half of whom return to battle.
“Since September of this year, Russia has been losing people on the battlefield in a ratio of 5 and even 6 to 1 in our country. So they want to grab more land before the pressure of the world on them can become unbearable.”
[…] SpaceX has signed a contract with the Pentagon to provide Ukraine with expanded access to a more secure version of Starlink satellite communication, according to a report by Bloomberg.
Under the agreement, 2,500 Ukrainian Starlink terminals will gain access to the Starshield system, which offers encrypted and secure signals that are less vulnerable to hacking and interference. Previously, only 500 terminals in Ukraine had access to Starshield.
The contract covers the servicing of a total of 3,000 terminals under two separate agreements. These services are scheduled to commence next year. […]
[…] Crime, border security and family separation
Trump said that crime is rising sharply in the United States and blamed it on migrants.
“Look, our country is a mess,” he said. “We have the highest crime rate.” He later said “a lot of that is migrant crime.”
There is no evidence of a migrant-driven crime wave in the U.S., and crime broadly is down, according to the most recently available data.
[…] Speaking about immigrants coming into the country, Trump also claimed there were “13,099 murderers released into our country over the last three years.”
Trump is misstating the data, as Welker noted during the interview. While there are more than 13,000 noncitizens convicted of homicide in the U.S. or abroad who aren’t in immigration detention centers, they came into the U.S. over the last four decades or more, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
[…] Trump also repeated his false claim that gangs have taken over an apartment building in Aurora, Colorado.
“We’re getting the worst gang probably with MS-13, and the Venezuelan gangs are the worst in the world. They’re vicious, violent people,” Trump said. “And you’ve seen what they’ve done in Colorado and other places. They’re taking over, they’re literally taking over apartment complexes and doing it with impunity. They don’t care.”
Welker pointed out during the interview that local police officials have refuted that claim.
Asked about his controversial policy of separating families who crossed the border illegally, Trump suggested President Barack Obama’s administration had done the same.
“You also had it with Obama,” Trump said. “You also know he built the jails for the children.”
Obama didn’t have a policy of family separation, as Welker pointed out during the interview and as NBC News fact-checked back in 2018. The detention centers the U.S. built during his administration — which were later used by Trump during his “zero tolerance” family separation policy — were due to a massive surge of unaccompanied minors who crossed the border without their parents during his administration.
Trump also asserted that migrant crossings at the southern border had all but ceased after he threatened the presidents of Canada and Mexico with new tariffs in a post-election call.
“Within 10 minutes after that phone call, we noticed that the people coming across the border, [bullshit] the southern border having to do with Mexico, there was at a trickle. Just a trickle,” Trump said. “In fact, I called the border. See, unlike my opponent, I do call the border a lot. And I said, ‘How’s the border looking today?’ They said, ‘There’s nobody here.’ They couldn’t believe it. The military stopped these vast groups of people. You know, we call them caravans. But they had caravans of people, and they largely stopped them.”
Trump is exaggerating here. Southern border crossings have been low since the summer, when President Joe Biden limited asylum for people who crossed the border without authorization. There isn’t any evidence that border conditions have changed dramatically in the last two weeks, as no new data has been made available since Trump made his tariff threat.
[…] Trump also vowed to end the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of citizenship to American-born children.
“We’re going to end that, because it’s ridiculous,” Trump said. “We’re the only country that has it, you know.”
That is false: More than 30 other countries recognize birthright citizenship.
The Jan. 6 riot
Trump repeated false and misleading claims about the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
“I saw people that didn’t even go into the building, and they were convicted. And you had the police saying, ‘Come on in. Come on in.’ I mean, you know, the police are saying, ‘Come on in, everybody, come on in.’ They had people, you know — you know, you have a lot of cameras. They don’t want to release the tapes. They don’t want to release the tape,” Trump said.
There’s no evidence that any police officers encouraged protesters to enter the Capitol. […]
It’s true that some Jan. 6 protesters who did not enter the Capitol were convicted. That was for serious crimes including assault of a police officer. [Important point.]
Trump also claimed that the House select committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack “deleted and destroyed a whole year and a half of testimony.”
“So the unselect committee went through a year and a half of testimony,” Trump said. “They deleted and destroyed all evidence of — that they found.”
[…] Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss, who chaired the committee, said in a 2023 letter to Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., who first made this claim, that private and sensitive information was sent to the White House and the Department of Homeland Security for review to ensure that certain information wasn’t released improperly.
According to Thompson, those agencies, and another House committee, continue to have access to the files and information the Republicans have argued was deleted, since the House committee didn’t archive them pending White House and DHS review.
“You know why?” Trump continued. “Because Nancy Pelosi was guilty. Nancy Pelosi turned down 10,000 troops. You wouldn’t have had a J6 because other people were guilty.
The Jan. 6 committee found no evidence to support the claim that he had offered Pelosi, who was speaker of the House at the time, troops. The committee did find that Trump had discussed using 10,000 National Guard members to protect his supporters.
And Pelosi did not have the authority to direct their movements. After rioting began, Pelosi and then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell requested military assistance.
Tariffs, jobs and inflation
Trump misconstrued the potential economic realities of tariffs, the taxes charged to importers on goods coming into the U.S. from abroad. […] corporations typically pass these import taxes on to consumers, leaving Americans to pick up the tab if they want to buy foreign goods. Trump enacted nearly $80 billion in new tariffs during his first term.
“I don’t believe” that tariffs are paid for by consumers, he told Welker when pressed on that fact. He also argued “they cost Americans nothing.” [bullshit]
But American consumers paid hundreds of dollars each year in higher costs as a result of the tariffs Trump enacted in his first administration, according to one analysis from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
He went on to claim that his tariff on washing machines coming in from China and South Korea, which started at 20% and rose to 50%, helped companies that made them, including Whirlpool, which has a major plant in Ohio.
“We saved thousands of jobs, tens of thousands of jobs. They were all going out of business because they were dumping washing machines,” Trump said of the imports of washing machines from Asia. “When I put the tariffs on, they became successful businesses.”
[…] The International Trade Commission, a federal government agency, said in a 2020 report that Trump’s tariffs had contributed to 1,800 new jobs in the washing machine industry, including 200 at Whirlpool. The rest of the jobs came from foreign producers opening plants in the U.S.
Each new job, however, cost consumers $815,000, according to the ITC, because washers started costing more as American manufacturers hiked their prices to match their foreign competitors’. (Whirlpool disputed the figure, which was calculated by economists at the Federal Reserve and the University of Chicago, arguing it was less than $22,000 per job.)
Trump also said that when Biden took office, “they didn’t have inflation for a year and a half.” He added, “Then they created inflation with energy and with spending too much.”
Inflation — measured by the cost of services and goods — started going up in the summer of 2020, when Trump was in office, before sharply rising after he left office, according to the Consumer Price Index. It peaked 18 months later, in June of 2022.
Covid relief spending — which began under Trump but accelerated under Biden — played a role in fueling inflation, but economists believe supply chain issues during the pandemic, production costs and changing demand are also to blame.
Vaccines
Trump has picked Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent anti-vaccine activist, to be his secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. In the interview, Trump said he’d be open to eliminating childhood vaccines “if they’re dangerous for the children.”
“When you look at what’s going on with disease and sickness in our country, something’s wrong,” Trump said. “If you take a look at autism, go back 25 years, autism was almost nonexistent. It was, you know, 1 out of 100,000 and now it’s close to 1 out of 100.”
In 2000, 1 in 150 children had been diagnosed with autism by age 8, compared to 1 in 36 today. But as Welker noted in the interview, researchers say that is in large part due to increased screening and a greater awareness of the complex disorder. Scientists have also linked genetic factors to autism.
Trump said he wasn’t sure vaccines were leading to higher rates of autism, but was open to more investigation.
“Hey, look, I’m not against vaccines. The polio vaccine is the greatest thing. … But when you talk about autism, because it was brought up, and you look at the amount we have today versus 20 or 25 years ago, it’s pretty scary,” Trump said.
There is no evidence of a link between vaccines and autism, as hundreds of studies have found childhood vaccines to be safe.
The 2024 election
As for his victory last month over Harris, Trump made exaggerated claims about his success with young voters in response to a question about TikTok.
“I won youth by 30%. All Republicans lose youth. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s changing. And last time, we were down 30% with youth. This time, we’re up 35% with youth,” Trump said during the interview.
Trump picked up a larger proportion of voters under 30 than any Republican presidential candidate since 2008, according to NBC News exit polling, but he didn’t win them. Among voters ages 18-29, Harris won 54% to Trump’s 43%, the exit poll shows.
For fifty-four years, generations of Syrians lived and died in a country that was colloquially known as Assad’s Syria. It was a place where children were taught that the walls had ears and that a misplaced word could lead to being disappeared. The regime had multiple branches of secret police, collectively called the Mukhabarat, which helped underpin its one-party, one-family, one-man rule. President Bashar al-Assad, and his late father and predecessor, Hafez, were omnipresent forces, glaring down from the many billboards, posters, and statues that were felled this week with all the exuberance, rage, and grief of the long-oppressed.
The end of Assad’s Syria was as stunning as it was swift. It took eleven days for some of Assad’s armed opponents to bring down the regime. The fall of the capital, Damascus, on Sunday morning marked the climax of an almost fourteen-year campaign that began in March, 2011, when peaceful protests morphed into a messy war that pitted myriad armed rebel groups (and others, including foreign jihadi fighters) against the Syrian military and each other. Since about 2018, the conflict had been largely stalemated, and Syria has been a unified state in name only. Its northwestern province of Idlib was controlled by the Sunni Islamists of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (H.T.S.), a coalition led by the group formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of Al Qaeda. Its oil-rich northeast was dominated first by isis and then by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which are supported by the U.S. The northwest, around the town of Azaz, was home to the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army. Jordanian-influenced rebel groups held sway in pockets of the south. The rest was what remained of Assad’s Syria.
[…] It took eleven days for some of Assad’s armed opponents to bring down the regime. The fall of the capital, Damascus, on Sunday morning marked the climax of an almost fourteen-year campaign that began in March, 2011, when peaceful protests morphed into a messy war that pitted myriad armed rebel groups (and others, including foreign jihadi fighters) against the Syrian military and each other. Since about 2018, the conflict had been largely stalemated, and Syria has been a unified state in name only. Its northwestern province of Idlib was controlled by the Sunni Islamists of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (H.T.S.), a coalition led by the group formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of Al Qaeda. Its oil-rich northeast was dominated first by isis and then by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which are supported by the U.S. The northwest, around the town of Azaz, was home to the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army. Jordanian-influenced rebel groups held sway in pockets of the south. The rest was what remained of Assad’s Syria.
This year, on November 27th, the same day that a ceasefire took hold between Israel and Hezbollah, in neighboring Lebanon, H.T.S. and its allies abruptly pushed south from their stronghold in Idlib. Cities fell rapidly, one after another, with little resistance from the forces of a crumbling state that had been hollowed out by years of U.S.-imposed sanctions, endemic regime corruption, and Israeli air strikes on military infrastructure.
By Sunday morning, Assad had fled on a private plane shortly before Damascus International Airport closed down. […] Assad did not address the nation or issue a statement regarding his departure. His Prime Minister, Mohammad Ghazi al-Jalali, extended his hand to the opposition. […] (Earlier this week, as the opposition gained momentum, some of Syria’s neighbors—Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq—closed their borders with the country.)
[…] tearful citizens hurrying through a deserted airport; of soldiers abandoning their posts, leaving military fatigues, equipment, and even tanks strewn in the streets. In the end, Assad’s exhausted army of conscripts wasn’t prepared to continue to fight and die for a dictatorship.
[…] The push was spearheaded by Abu Mohammad al-Julani, the founder and leader of Jabhat al-Nusra, which he rebranded as part of H.T.S. a few years ago, claiming to disavow ties to Al Qaeda and casting himself as a fatigues-clad statesman. […]
Since late November, Julani has issued statements aimed at reassuring Syria’s many religious minorities, including the Alawites, of which the Assads are members, that his group has embraced pluralism and religious tolerance. (The overtures have been made to Christians, and others, too.) The coming hours, days, and weeks will be a test of those stated intentions. Julani has said that he’s a changed man, but at least one of his fellow-fighters, a man I’ve known for years who held leadership positions in Jabhat al-Nusra, told me that the changes were cosmetic. […]
Julani remains a U.S.-designated terrorist with a ten-million-dollar bounty on his head, which will surely complicate any state-building plans.
[…] Syria was a crucial strategic supply route for Hezbollah, which now finds itself landlocked by enemies […]
It was a day of joy for a fervently nationalistic people, for the detainees finally freed, but also of pain and sadness for the hundreds of thousands killed and disappeared not only in the recent brutal war but in the many decades that preceded it. […]
“I suppose there’s kind of an association with tea as an old person’s drink,” says Gillie Owen, aged 20.
The student from London says he and his friends prefer water or diet soda drinks…
Last week, one of Britain’s oldest tea firms, Typhoo Tea, collapsed after a drop in sales.
The 120-year-old company has been rescued by vape maker Supreme, whose boss says he wants to develop new products under the brand.
Sandy Chadha told the BBC the tea market was in decline but said Supreme would look to appeal to the younger generation who preferred “things like iced tea and healthier drinks”.
Tea sales volumes have fallen by 4.3% compared with two years ago, according to analysts at NielsenIQ.
And a recent survey by Mintel suggested less than half the nation, 48%, now drink tea at least once a day.
Kiti Soininen, food and drink researcher at Mintel, says traditional tea is facing “intense competition” from fruit, herbal, green and speciality black tea…
Also, I read that putin abandoned Al-Assad and Syria because they didn’t want to pull resources from their rape and pillage of Ukraine.
In the previous large scale support of Assad the Russian supplies included Russian special forces, Russian mercenaries, air strikes and large amounts of arms and equipment. They are short of everything for their own war in Ukraine. They couldn’t support Assad without pulling forces off the front line in Ukraine and Ukraine would quickly be told by US/EU intelligence what had happened.
Potentially Russia could have sent some planes for air support. They have been holding back in Ukraine because they don’t want to risk their planes against Ukraine’s US and NATO provided air defense. The rebels in Syria don’t have any air or good air defense so the Russian planes have nearly free reign. But some planes making air strikes are not going to help in the face of a general army collapse. They might even have been doing so, I don’t see any confirmation either way.
Iran did continue to back Assad as long as it looked like he could hold on. But Iran can’t send soldiers or supplies on a large scale, they just don’t have the money and a bunch of their supplies have been sent to Russia.
Donald Trump isn’t off the hook for Jan. 6 just yet.
Though the criminal cases against him are all but dead, Trump is likely to be fighting eight civil lawsuits — from members of Congress and injured police officers — deep into his second term. They may be the last form of legal redress Trump faces for his role in spurring the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.
Those lawsuits have been steadily advancing for years, largely overshadowed by the explosive Jan. 6 committee and grand jury investigations. But now that the criminal cases have imploded, they’ve become a last stand of sorts for those seeking to hold Trump accountable for the chaos his supporters wrought that day.
“These cases, unlike the criminal case, will not be affected by the election,” said Joseph Sellers, a lawyer representing 10 current and former Democratic House members suing Trump and members of two far-right groups involved in the riot, the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. “Our clients suffered real injuries that entitle them to relief, but also I think are seeking some measure of accountability given President Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 events and the events leading up to it.” …
Anyone else finding lately that they get a 404 virtually 100% of the time now when trying to get the cached version of a site that’s down? It was never perfectly reliable but I don’t think I’ve had a cache: link DTRT in literally months now. Not a single time in months.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Re: SC @254:
I would be interested to hear people’s experiences or cautions.
I collected assessments of Bluesky under PZ’s Mastodon post (18+20, 28, 29).
They made a Twitter clone. By design, it can’t be meaningfully decentralized. They’re understaffed for maintenance and moderation, and swimming in venture capital. Enshittification is very likely. For the moment, folks say it feels like Twitter.
Oh, and I’ve heard Bluesky’s not accessible to screen readers at all: no hierarchical structure to navigate the text and buttons on the screen. Mastodon’s official client is less bad at accessibility (still not great), so blind users turn to 3rd-party clients that do it better.
MARA Holdings Inc., headquartered in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., announced on Dec. 3 that it bought a 114-megawatt (MW) wind farm in Hansford County—about 95 miles north of Amarillo—from a joint venture of National Grid Plc and the Washington State Investment Board, according to a filing with the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, as first reported by Bloomberg. The sale expected to close in the first quarter of 2025.
According to MARA, the company will take the wind farm off the energy grid and, instead, use what it produces to power its Bitcoin mining operation in its North Texas location. The wind farms were not a part of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) grid, but instead they were located within the Southwest Power Pool, which manages the market for the central U.S., including but not limited to most or parts of Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota and North Dakota.
In the long run I expect this ends up back on the grid someplace but that this seems like a good idea at all is fairly absurd.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Re: Bekenstein Bound @285:
a 404 […] when trying to get the cached version of a site
What cache service are you referring to? And of what site?
Wayback and Archive.today (the two-letter suffix one) have been working for me lately. Google cache is long gone; I heard they linked Wayback instead somewhere, but I haven’t seen it. Yandex has a cache. Are you saying the cache service you tried was itself down, 404-ing before it could offer to retrieve an archived page?
a groundbreaking advancement in noninvasive brain-monitoring technologies […] compatible with hairy scalps. [Temporary] skin-conformal EEG e-tattoo sensors […] Using individual 3D head scans, custom sensor layout design, and a 5-axis microjet printing robot […] After printing and self-drying, the inks form conductive, stretchable, and breathable thin films that ensure high signal fidelity, even over extended periods. […] e-tattoos could play a pivotal role in developing [brain-computer interfaces] for various industries, including prosthetics, virtual reality (VR), and human-robot teaming. […] In our study, 3D head scanning and printing of 10 electrodes can be completed within about 15 min.
[…]
More work is needed to scan and print on heads with long and thick hairs. Highlighting the persistent issue of racial bias in neuroscience research is crucial, as traditional EEG electrodes are often unreliable on individuals of African descent […] Curly hairs tend to push against the [traditional] EEG cap, reducing contact between the electrodes and the scalp […] E-tattoos must retain their form and functionality when exposed to external factors such as abrasion to be effectively used in applications such as sleep monitoring […] Thus, further enhancing the adhesion […] is an important future research direction.
a lung infection that can be caused by any of about 30 different pathogens. It is among the leading causes of death in people older than age 70 or under age 5. […] But preventative vaccines against one specific type of bacteria, Streptococcus pneumoniae, can greatly reduce the risk of hospitalization and severe complications. […] These guidelines lower the recommended age […] from age 65 to 50, covering millions of currently unprotected people.
[…]
for adults between ages 50 and 64; about half of U.S. people […] have at least one medical condition that raises their risk […] Experts say lowering […] to age 50 could help protect many […] including those who don’t know they have a chronic condition.
[…]
could also address health equity concerns. For reasons that aren’t entirely clear, Black people have a higher incidence rate of pneumococcal pneumonia in their 50s than people of other races at any age.
[…]
guidelines recommend that people aged 50 and older get a jab called a pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV) […] [The CDC] will later decide whether to recommend booster shots for people who received the vaccine more than five years ago or who received a previous version of the vaccine that covered fewer types.
birgerjohanssonsays
Something to cheer you up in a bad time.
BRITISH MUM REACTS | Family Guy – British Jokes
A Chinese government-linked group that Microsoft tracks as Storm-2077 has been actively targeting critical organizations and US government agencies as of yesterday, according to Redmond’s threat intel team.
The new-ish crew has been around since at least January, and while Microsoft declined to enumerate Storm-2077’s victim count, “there are indicators that this group is active as of yesterday, actively pursuing threat activity,” Sherrod DeGrippo, director of threat intelligence strategy, told The Register.
The espionage crew shares some overlap with Silk Typhoon operatives (aka Hafnium), and other illicit activity that other vendors track as TAG-100. Over the last 12 months, the Chinese spies mostly focused on US targets in the defense industrial base, aviation, telecommunications, financial and legal services industries, plus government and non-governmental agencies…
Westfalia Fruit is laser-etching product information directly onto mangoes in an effort to save up to 10 million plastic price look-up (PLU) stickers annually.
‘Extensive’ testing and trails have taken place in a collaboration between Westfalia’s capabilities in the Netherlands and Germany to make sure that the laser etching process does not compromise product quality or shelf life.
Reportedly, consumers have responded positively to the change, and the company aspires to expand its range across Europe ‘in the near future’.
“The introduction of laser etching, which is almost like a tattoo on the mango, has been an exciting project,” explains Mathijs Benard, head of Operations Central Europe. “Not only does it make the fruit stand out in-store, but it also has the potential to save up to 10 million plastic stickers a year…
Physicists have been puzzling over conflicting observational results pertaining to the accelerating expansion rate of our Universe—a major discovery recognized by the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics. New observational data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has confirmed that prior measurements of distances between nearby stars and galaxies made by the Hubble Space Telescope are not in error, according to a new paper published in The Astrophysical Journal. That means the discrepancy between observation and our current theoretical model of the Universe is more likely to be due to new physics…
JMsays
@291 birgerjohansson: It’s also possible that Trump thinks corporate public policy statements are as trustworthy as his public policy statements. So he doesn’t take them seriously when they say they are going to raise prices.
birgerjohanssonsays
The actress Dame Judi Dench turns 90 today. A.much nicer old Brit* than that mean media magnate which I refuse to name.
* yes, I know he came from Australia. So did Immortan Joe.
For reasons explained in the link, this is likely to bite Trump in the ass.
StevoRsays
Tiny whitefly fossils discovered in Hindon Maar offer rare insights into New Zealand’s ancient ecosystems. These 15-million-year-old specimens highlight whiteflies’ role in past forests and mark a significant addition to New Zealand’s growing insect fossil record. Newly discovered insect fossils are so small they can barely be seen by the human eye but have been preserved in an “extraordinary” way. Published in the journal Palaeobiodiversity and Palaeoenvironments, a new study reveals rare whitefly insect fossils have been found in Miocene age crater lake sediments at Hindon Maar, near Dunedin.
[…] – In March 2021, two Capitol Police officers, James Blassingame and Sidney Hemby, sued Trump, claiming he was liable for the injuries they suffered during the riot.
– In August 2021, seven more police officers who were attacked and beaten during the Capitol riot sued the former president.
– In January 2022, three more police officers — including two who aided the evacuation of lawmakers — sued Trump, seeking damages for their physical and emotional injuries.
– In January 2023, the longtime partner of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who died after the Jan. 6 riot, filed a wrongful death civil suit against Trump.
The New York Times reported the suits “have all been consolidated for the moment in front of Judge Amit P. Mehta, who has handled several criminal cases related to the riot.” The plaintiffs have accused the incoming Republican president of “conspiracy to violate civil rights, incitement to riot, battery, assault, disorderly conduct and infliction of emotional distress, among other things.”
To be sure, even if Trump were to lose the civil suits, there would be no criminal consequences, but they could prove to be politically embarrassing and financially costly. Indeed, let’s not forget that he’s suffered several major legal setbacks and defeats in recent years — the E. Jean Carroll case, the Trump Organization’s fraud case, the demise of his fraudulent charity, the demise of his fraudulent “university,” et al. — and those were all civil cases.
What’s more, while the Justice Department has a policy prohibiting federal criminal charges against a sitting president, the U.S. Supreme Court has already ruled that sitting presidents can face civil suits while in office, and claims from Trump’s lawyers that he’s immune in these cases have already been rejected by two courts.
There was an impressive ceremony in Paris on Saturday marking the reopening of Notre Dame Cathedral, and some prominent Americans were in attendance. First lady Jill Biden was there, for example, and she was seated near Donald Trump, who was making his first overseas trip since becoming president-elect.
This wouldn’t be especially notable were it not for the fact that the Republican quickly put an image from the event to unusual use. USA Today reported:
Get a whiff of this: For $199, you can smell the sweet scent of victory. And who can resist that? Not even your enemies, according to President-elect Donald Trump, who is hawking his “Fight Fight Fight” line of men’s and women’s fragrances. In a Truth Social post on Sunday, Trump shared a picture of himself having a pleasant exchange with first lady Jill Biden with a tongue-in-cheek caption: “A fragrance your enemies can’t resist.”
On Friday, the president-elect used his social media platform to tout the Trump-branded perfumes and colognes, and directed supporters to a sales website. “I call them Fight, Fight, Fight, because they represent us WINNING,” the Republican wrote, referring to the fragrances. “Great Christmas gifts for the family.”
It was two days later, however, when Trump published a follow-up item featuring an image of the president-elect and the incumbent first lady, alongside “A fragrance your enemies can’t resist” text.
It’s unclear whether Dr. Biden approved of her image being used in the Republican’s commercial enterprise, though I have a hunch I know the answer to that question.
But while that seems like a relevant detail, it’s also worth pausing to appreciate the larger context: Americans have never seen a president-elect sell so much branded merchandise.
[…] The GOP nominee pitched everything from Trump-branded watches to silver Trump commemorative coins, batches of digital trading cards to a weird cryptocurrency project, gold sneakers to Trump-endorsed Bibles.
[…] Now that Election Day has come and gone, it stands to reason that his sole focus would be on his return to the White House, not merchandising.
And yet, here we are.
On Friday, a half-hour after encouraging supporters to buy Trump-branded fragrances, the Republican also published an item encouraging supporters to buy Trump-branded watches. (The most expensive of the timepieces cost $100,000.)
And did I mention the Trump-branded guitars? Because they became available after Election Day, too.
There’s no modern precedent for anything like this, and it renews questions about the president-elect’s controversial personal finances and the motivation behind the schemes.
[…] perhaps most importantly, we’re dealing with a rhetorical shell game. As the Times’ Jonathan Swan summarized, “Trump is sending clear public signals to his nominees that he wants retribution, although he is then saying he will not direct them to act. But by saying that Jack Smith is ‘corrupt’ and that members of the Jan. 6 committee belong in prison, Trump is making no secret of what he wants his Justice Department to do.”
Exactly. The president-elect just told a national television audience [on Meet the Press] that he believes the Jan. 6 committee was comprised of criminals. At that point, whether he literally directs the FBI or the Justice Department to launch investigations is largely irrelevant.
Trump expects loyalists to make him happy — and he just left no doubts as to what would make him happy. The message wasn’t subtle, and it was almost certainly noticed by those eager to do his bidding.
[Trump] doesn’t have to make direct orders under circumstances like these. He’s eager to install partisan loyalists in positions of authority, while making his preferences known. It’s expected that they’ll know precisely what to do, making the discussion about pre-emptive pardons all the more relevant.
Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), the vice chair of the Jan. 6 committee, issued a withering statement in response to Trump’s interview. “There is no conceivably appropriate factual or constitutional basis for what Donald Trump is suggesting – a Justice Department investigation of the work of a congressional committee – and any lawyer who attempts to pursue that course would quickly find themselves engaged in sanctionable conduct,” Cheney said.
More bits of news from the same source:
[…] Trump II Clown Show
Trump has named his criminal defense attorney Alina Habba as a White House counselor to the president
Fracking CEO Chris Wright, Trump’s pick for energy secretary, preaches the benefits of climate change
Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s pick for director of national intelligence, is on the Hill this week meeting with senators.
————————
Ya Don’t Say?
The Guardian:
As Donald Trump gathered his supporters, family and friends at Mar-a-Lago on US election day last month to wait for the results to trickle in, a small group of far-right Germans went largely unnoticed.
Among them was the purported semi-professional, one-time porn actor, self-confessed former cocaine user, convicted thief and hard-right candidate for the German parliament Phillipp-Anders Rau. Together with a compact delegation of young political activists and influencers, Rau posed for the cameras with the American president-elect at his invitation, chanting “Fight! Fight! Fight!” in English and German.
Followup to comment 264, also comments 260 and 274.
[…] On foreign policy, Trump argued that Mexico and Canada are purportedly being subsidized by the United States. His conclusion based on this claim?
“If we’re going to subsidize them, let them become a state,” Trump said.
As he has done before, Trump complained during the interview with Welker [NBC’s Kristen Welker] that she was “very hostile” to him and said her questions were “pretty nasty.” He told the host that when she had interviewed Biden, her questions were not as aggressive. [Trump is such a whiny doofus.]
“I’ve never interviewed President Biden,” Welker explained to him.
Perhaps encapsulating how detached from reality Trump continues to be, he continues to cling to his made-up fantasy of winning the 2020 election.
“For the sake of unifying this country, will you concede the 2020 election and turn the page on that chapter?” Welker asked.
Trump replied, “No. No. Why would I do that.”
Trump lost the 2020 election by a margin of over 7 million votes and 74 electoral votes to Biden.
A few years ago, fishermen in the Dmanisi municipality of Georgia discovered a stone tablet inscribed with a mysterious language—a script that has the potential to upend the history of ancient Caucasian writing.
Researchers in Georgia and France have analyzed a carved tablet with an undeciphered script unearthed by Georgian locals near Bashplemi Lake in 2021. A study published in November in the Journal of Ancient History and Archaeology suggests that the inscription could be an ancient local Georgian script. If this interpretation, and the artifact’s tentative dating to the Early Iron Age or earlier, are confirmed, it could rewrite our understanding of the origins of Georgian writing.
“The signs on the tablet undoubtedly represent a script,” the researchers wrote in the study, adding that it could even “have been an alphabet.” The inscription, dubbed “Bashplemi inscription” after the nearby lake, is composed of 39 unique characters—likely including numbers and punctuation marks—with some repeating for a total of 60 signs divided into seven horizontal lines. Though the text remains undeciphered, certain characters appear similar to other scripts.
“Generally, the Bashplemi inscription does not repeat any script known to us; however, most of the symbols used therein resemble ones found in the scripts of the Middle East, as well as those of geographically remote countries such as India, Egypt and West Iberia,” they explained, also listing Phoenician, Aramaic, and Greek. Additionally, they noted a likeness to Bronze and Early Iron Age seals unearthed in Georgia. Many of the similarities, however, were with Caucasian scripts (a region including parts of Georgia, Russia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia), including Georgian Mrgvlovani, Albanian, and proto-Georgian….
An advocacy organization just concluded a study into which of the states in the U.S. has the worst traffic laws, and hands down the answer was Missouri. Researchers say if the laws there don’t change, more people will die on the state’s roads.
Advocates For Highway & Auto Safety conducted a study of traffic laws from state to state, the Kansas City Star reports. Cathy Chase, President for the Advocates For Highway & Auto Safety, told the paper researchers looked at whether states had 18 different highway laws proven to reduce crashes, save lives and reduce injuries. These included restrictions on new drivers, car seat requirements for children and seat belts, and helmet laws. Missouri came up last in the study. Of those 18 laws, the state had just one that was enacted, and even then the law isn’t exactly official, says the Star:…
Liliana Goodson, perhaps the coolest 30-year-old alive, flew to Australia to attend clown school back in 2023 with the $3,000 gold-plated handgun in her luggage. She even got to practice her clown school admissions portfolio with the customs agents:
When asked at the airport if she was carrying any prohibited items with her, Goodson claimed she was not, the court was told.
“What about the gun in your bag?” she was asked by a customs officer.
Goodson replied: “Oh yeah, I forgot about that.”
A review of Goodson’s phone revealed she had searched online “can I have a gun in my suitcase?” and set a calendar entry with a note reminding her to “put gun in suitcase”.
“Heritage Foundation Plan To Fight Antisemitism Has Hilariously Ironic Problem”
“If your plan to fight antisemitism is itself antisemitic, you might have lost the plot.”
The Heritage Foundation […] has done it again. The organization that brought us the execrable pile of crazy that is Project 2025 has a new plan to save all of us Jews from the scourge of antisemitism in America, presumably so we can then all go to Israel and bring about the Second Coming […] whereupon all the evangelicals get whisked off to heaven to sit at God’s right hand and yammer incessantly about how great Jesus is to Him, until even He gets tired of listening and tells them to all go watch Davey and Goliath for several eons and give Him some peace and goddamn quiet.
The plan is called Project Esther, named after the biblical Persian Jewish queen who saved all the Jews by sexing up her husband the horny king and then, while he lay sweaty and breathless and spent, convincing him to let her people take up arms and defend themselves against the forces of his adviser Haman who were about to slaughter them.
[…] Project Esther proposes to save the modern Jews not by sexing up Persian potentates, but by attacking anti-Zionist and progressive groups that have been agitating for an end to the current war in Gaza and freedom for the Palestinian people. (The wingnuts call these groups the Hamas Support Network, hyuk hyuk.) The proposed tactics include deporting immigrant members of the group and siccing law enforcement on the other members.
Of course we all know, anti-Zionism and antisemitism are the exact same thing. Or at least that’s the case if, like the Heritage people, your brain is basically a glop of pudding coated in rat poison.
Heritage has been running around pitching this plan to Jewish organizations. The Forward got its hands on the pitch deck, and you’ll never guess who this plan to combat antisemitism blames for all the antisemitism in the first place! […]
The Heritage Foundation’s Project Esther, a conservative plan to counter antisemitism, sees the problem as one in which a handful of “masterminds” including Jews like George Soros and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker are seeking to “dismantle Western democracies, values and culture,”
[LOL]
Let us get this straight: the plan to fight antisemitism relies on a claim that wealthy, shadowy Jews are manipulating the public in order to game public opinion and destroy America from within?
Seriously, we keep examining that sentence like it came out of the Talmud. We’re dying here, we are but atoms, load us into the Hadron Large Collider and send us zipping around a giant circular tunnel until we create a black hole that can suck us in and crush us into nothing.
The deck goes on to link these alleged masterminds to various groups that have been agitating against the war, including, uh, Jewish Voices for Peace. Apparently the 23,000 Jews that belong to that group are virulent anti-Semites. Someone should tell them!
Here, by the way, is one slide from the pitch deck. See if you can guess what almost all the non-Jewish masterminds of this alleged plot to destroy Western civilization have in common. Go on, guess! [Illustration at the link]
We get why the wingnuts are throwing Soros in here — there is absolutely nothing on Earth for which they won’t blame him — but Pritzker? As The Forward notes, the governor of Illinois and his family are not exactly anti-Zionists. His sister, Penny, who served as President Obama’s Commerce Secretary, has compared pro-Palestinian protesters at Harvard to the KKK. Pritzker himself gently reproached the Chicago City Council when it passed a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza just before the Democrats came to town for their national convention in August. Not exactly the actions of a committed anti-Semite!
Yr Wonkette figures one of two possibilities: either Republicans see Pritzker as a viable presidential candidate in 2028 and are trying to bloody him up well ahead of the race, or Republicans are galactic idiots. Or both!
And what about antisemitism on the right? What about all those white supremacists who have been empowered by Donald Trump’s rise over the last nine years? You know, the right-wingers who statistics show commit anti-Semitic crimes at a vastly higher rate than any other group?
James Carafano, who runs the Heritage Foundation’s antisemitism task force, said in October that “white supremacists are not my problem because white supremacists are not part of being conservative.”
[Scoff and LOL at the same time.]
Oh, buddy. You might want to sit down.
Heritage has been pitching Project Esther for two months, but has found a cool reception among Jewish groups. And by “cool” we mean that no major Jewish organizations have endorsed it, or said anything about it at all. Wonder why:
The think tank, which also produced the controversial Project 2025 blueprint for a second Trump administration, has struggled to attract Jewish supporters for its antisemitism plan, which appears to have been assembled by several evangelical Christian groups.
A man in Altoona, Pennsylvania, was stopped with a fake New Jersey ID and is being held for questioning in connection with the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City, law enforcement sources told ABC News.
The man was on a Greyhound bus traveling through Altoona on Monday morning, sources said, when he got off and walked into a McDonald’s where a witness recognized him from the images of the suspect circulated by police, sources said.
The man had a similar gun to the one used in Wednesday’s assassination-style killing outside a Midtown Manhattan hotel, sources said.
Police also recovered writings and a computer from the man in Altoona, sources said…
birgerjohanssonsays
Joe Biden is the first president to register job growth over every single month of his term but he is getting no credit.
“The man is being questioned in Altoona, Pennsylvania, and had a gun similar to the one used in the shooting, sources tell NBC News.”
The man police are questioning today in Pennsylvania was described as “suspicious” by customers at a McDonald’s, who called police, three senior law enforcement officials said.
When police arrived, they noticed the man had a fake ID, and he was taken into a police station for questioning, two senior law enforcement officials said.
Once there, they discovered he had a gun similar to the one used in the killing of Brian Thompson, a silencer and a fake New Jersey ID, the two sources said. […]
Conservative justices objected as the Supreme Court on Monday sidestepped a new dispute over race in education by declining to consider whether an admissions program for public high schools in Boston unlawfully considered race.
Justice Samuel Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas both said they would have taken up the case, while Justice Neil Gorsuch said he shared their concerns about the policy.
Alito wrote that there was “overwhelming direct evidence of intentional discrimination” that warranted the Supreme Court’s intervention.
The court’s refusal to hear the case marks the second time the court has declined to review a policy aimed at increasing diversity in public high schools since the high court ended the consideration of race in college admissions last year.
That ruling left in doubt whether the court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, has the votes to strike down admissions policies that do not explicitly consider race but nevertheless lead to a more diverse class.
“We have now twice refused to correct a glaring constitutional error that threatens to perpetuate race-based affirmative action,” Alito added.
The policy, implemented by the Boston School Committee in 2021, applied to three selective high schools in Boston: Boston Latin School, Boston Latin Academy and John D. O’Bryant School. It replaced a previous emphasis on standardized test scores as well as grades. Under the new plan, grades were considered, with 20 percent of the seats taken by those with the best grades.
[…] The plan, which was only in effect for one year, was challenged by the Boston Parent Coalition for Academic Excellence, a group representing white and Asian parents, which said the policy constituted a form of racial discrimination under the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause.
A federal judge ruled that the policy was lawful because it was written in a race neutral way. The Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed.
The Supreme Court in February turned away a similar challenge to an admissions policy at a Virginia high school that was also aimed at increasing diversity.
In a statement, Gorsuch said that the fact the Boston schools’ policy was no longer in effect was one reason not to hear the case.
In other action Monday in the schools context, the court also declined to take up a case out of Wisconsin on whether parents can sue schools over policies intended to protect students struggling with their gender identity.
The Eau Claire Area School District issued guidance in 2021 in support for students who are transgender, nonbinary or gender non-conforming. The policy states that in some cases, an affected student’s parents may not be central to the process if there is a risk of lack of acceptance at home.
The policy was challenged by Parents Protecting Our Children, a group representing parents. They argue it violates their parental rights under both the 14th Amendment’s due process clause and the First Amendment’s free exercise clause.
Lower courts ruled that the group did not have legal standing to pursue its claims because it could not show that any members had been harmed by it.
Again, Alito and Thomas said they would have taken the case up, as did fellow conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh. […]
Even the founders and an enthusiastic governor admit it sounds crazy: Charge up a train full of massive batteries with clean solar or wind energy out on the plains, then roll the trains to Denver or any other spot that’s low on power without using billion-dollar electrical lines.
The train track becomes the transmission line. “Trainsmission,” by the company’s coinage…
Cadbury-parent Mondelez International (MDLZ.O), opens new tab is exploring the acquisition of chocolate maker Hershey (HSY.N), opens new tab, Bloomberg News reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the matter, in what would create one of the world’s largest confectioners…
When people apply for a job, they tend to expect predictable questions about their work histories, relevant skills and educational backgrounds. When it comes to those seeking positions in Donald Trump’s upcoming administration, the lines of inquiry are reportedly quite … different.
The New York Times, for example, reportedly spoke to several people involved in the hiring process for high-ranking positions inside the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies. They faced questions about their political loyalties.
The questions went further than just affirming allegiance to the incoming administration. The interviewers asked which candidate the applicants had supported in the three most recent elections, what they thought about the events of Jan. 6, 2021, and whether they believed the 2020 election was stolen. The sense they got was that there was only one right answer to each question.
The Times’ report […] added that those who either decried Jan. 6 violence or acknowledged the reality of the 2020 presidential election, found that their interview answers “were met with silence and the taking of notes.”
The applicants, the article went on to note, “didn’t get the jobs.”
While it’s probably not surprising to see reporting like this, it’s worth emphasizing that these questions, if the Times’ report is accurate, aren’t just about measuring loyalty to Trump, his agenda, and/or his vision. Rather, if the questions focused on Jan. 6 and the Republicans’ election conspiracy theories, it sounds as if job applicants were tested on their loyalty to Trump’s lies, too.
Making matters worse, the Times published a separate report on Silicon Valley billionaires and millionaires who have been “all over” the president-elect’s transition process, “shaping hiring decisions and even conducting interviews for senior-level jobs.”
Their involvement, to a degree far deeper than previously reported, has made this one of the most potentially conflict-ridden presidential transitions in modern history. It also carries what could be vast implications for the Trump administration’s policies on issues including taxes and the regulation of artificial intelligence, not to mention clashing mightily with the notion that Mr. Trump’s brand of populism is all about helping the working man.
[Accurate]
The report […] made for an unsettling read. One of Elon Musk’s friends, for example, has reportedly interviewed candidates for jobs at the State Department, despite the fact that he has “no experience in foreign affairs.” Another Musk pal has reportedly interviewed those seeking Pentagon positions. A different Musk friend has also reportedly “conducted personnel interviews.”
Remarkably, the Times added that Musk’s mother has been “involved in the transition,” and she recently said during an on-air interview, “I like to sit in on meetings” related to her son’s Department of Government Ethics (DOGE). […]
A polygamous religious leader who claimed more than 20 spiritual “wives ” including 10 underage girls faces decades in prison at his sentencing on Monday for coercing girls as young as 9 years old to submit to criminal sex acts with him and other adults.
Samuel Bateman, whose small group was an offshoot of the sect once led by Warren Jeffs, has pleaded guilty to a yearslong scheme to transport girls across state lines for his sex crimes, and later to kidnap some of them from protective custody. His plea agreement called for 20 to 50 years in prison, though each conviction carries a possible life sentence…
The Democratic senator Peter Welch and independent senator Joe Manchin have proposed a constitutional amendment that would impose term limits on supreme court justices, saying such a move is necessary to restore faith in the nation’s highest court…
Formulating it as a constitutional amendment means it will be very difficult to get it implemented.
If you’re one of the many adults who hate needles, you may be in luck. Scientists have taken inspiration from squids’ high pressure liquid jets and developed a needle-free device to inject drugs into organs deep within the body.
“Needles require specialized training to administer, present challenges with safe disposal and carry the risk of needle-stick injuries, whether used externally or for deeper, internal applications,” says Giovanni Traverso, a translational engineering researcher at MIT.
To avoid needles’ risks and challenges, Traverso and colleagues designed a microjet device that uses pressure to push drugs such as insulin into a variety of organs. Much like the contractions that squids use to pressurize and propel liquid through their funnel-like siphons, this device can precisely direct liquid in different directions depending on the specific target, the team reports November 20 in Nature…
In July, just a few days after President Joe Biden ended his re-election bid, as Democrats rallied behind Vice President Kamala Harris’ 2024 candidacy, Donald Trump turned his attention to something unexpected.
In a rant published to his social media platform, [Trump] condemned a gag order imposed on him months earlier in his criminal case in New York, slamming the order as “unconstitutional.” The then-candidate went to claim that the order was “interfering” with his candidacy — he didn’t say how or why — and suggested the gag order was part of an electoral conspiracy.
“Can this really be allowed to stand?” Trump concluded. The answer, evidently, is yes. The Washington Post reported:
The Supreme Court on Monday declined to lift the gag order placed on President-elect Donald Trump that bars him from talking about people involved in his New York criminal trial that resulted in his conviction for trying to influence the 2016 election. The justices did not offer a rationale for why they were keeping in place the order by New York Supreme Court Justice Juan M. Merchan, who presided over the trial in which Trump was found guilty on 34 felony counts of making hush money payments to an adult-film actress to keep her quiet about their sexual relationship.
[…] It was in April when Judge Merchan first imposed a gag order on the then-GOP candidate in his hush-money/falsifying-business-records case. Trump responded soon after by going after the judge’s daughter — publicly and repeatedly — which led to a revised gag order.
[Trump] was told he could still talk publicly about much of the case — at the time, he spoke of little else — but among other things, the criminal defendant was told to refrain from making public statements related to jurors and witnesses.
When Trump played fast and loose with the boundaries, he was held in contempt and faced financial penalties in the form of thousands of dollars in fines.
While a jury ultimately found the defendant guilty on 34 counts, the defendant and his attorneys have continued to challenge the legality of the gag order, though each of those efforts have failed.
As for Trump’s underlying claim that gag orders are unconstitutional, no court has ever reached such a conclusion. When accused criminals are out on bond, they have to meet a variety of conditions, including refraining from making public comments that might interfere with the judicial proceedings. It’s pretty standard stuff.
The president-elect would have Americans believe that he’s some kind of victim. Those claims have never made any sense, and they apparently didn’t generate much sympathy from the U.S. Supreme Court.
[…] It’s clear to me that not a few people think that putting Trump to his test, saying “we’ll believe it when we see it, champ,” is the same as saying “nothing bad can happen.” […]When Kinzinger [former Rep. Adam Kinzinger]says “bring it on,” I’m pretty sure he’s not saying “yes, I welcome you putting me in jail. And I’ll be pumped in jail.” I think he’s saying that knowing Donald Trump’s cowardice and with his history of being all talk and little follow through, he doubts Trump’s up to it. But he’ll hit it standing on his feet regardless.
We need a lot more of that.
The talking past each other is born, in part, by the fact that there are a lot of people who feel pretty burnt by the rhetoric of “norms” and institutions and the law, what would hold and what wouldn’t. And in a way they’re right to be. But that rhetoric and discourse was always the thinnest and most vacuous part of the opposition to Donald Trump during his firm term in office. […]
We’re in a worse place than we were eight years ago and in real but by no means all ways we’re in a worse place than we were four years ago. As is always the case, we don’t know where we will be in four years. But the range of possibilities is pretty wide. It’s also the case that the American presidency has a lot of powers to it, especially if it’s backed by a compliant judiciary and Congress. But the reality is that the American system is replete with levers oppositions can use to stymie, block, slow down, obstruct and reverse those same powers. Anyone familiar with American history and the dispersal of power in American government knows this. […]
Yeah, there are no guarantees. Why would there be? But there are a lot of tools too. It’s easy to be overawed by talk and boasts and threats. But we don’t need to be.
There’s only one reason that Assad is drinking cocktails in Moscow together with Putin, and it ain’t the “humanitarian” one as Russia would like you to think – it’s their main trading card with the new Syrian government to keep their two main bases there.
🤞 nothing 💥 happens to him before that deal is made.
[…] The Russians still occupy their bases along the coast, but the Syrian opposition controls the province and have not yet tried to take them by force. Russian ships have left the port at Tartus and there are reports of Russian soldiers elsewhere in the country who are trapped and can’t be evacuated. Basically, it’s a chaotic withdrawal for Russia.
[…] The flag of the Syrian opposition now flies at the Syrian Embassy in Moscow.
[…] Assad’s infamous Sednaya prison has hundreds of prisoners trapped in underground cells.
If the international community wants to rescue some credibility with #Syria’s people, it should send specialists to #Sednaya Prison in #Damascus immediately — there are 100s, possibly 1000s of prisoners stuck 2-3 layers underground, behind electronic locks & concealed doors.
[…] Last week, Trump’s son Eric promoted preorders for a new Trump Golf game set to drop in the summer of 2025. The game will reportedly offer in-app purchases of specialty virtual golf clubs ranging from the $9.99 Trump Gold club to the $99 Trump Noir club.
According to the creators of the game, you too can “Become Trump.” Maybe they mean you can waste millions of taxpayer dollars playing golf instead of helping the people that voted for you? One thing is for sure: Winning in Trump Golf will likely result in receiving the same kind of made-up trophies as Trump gets.
Add it to the list of gold-looking crap Trump sells […]
“Here Comes The Old Republican Bitcoin Pump And Dump!”
“Republican Senator Cynthia Lummis has a bill to make some government Bitcoin reserves, WCGW?”
The new extra-Trump-slobbering Congress hasn’t been sworn in yet, but Republican Senator Cynthia Lummis, who has named herself “the Bitcoin Senator,” is hot to trot with a bill for the government to buy $100 billion worth of Bitcoin, or about five percent of the global supply.
You’ll remember that a certain Mr. Bankrupted-Six-Businesses has been pushing that idea too, to use the US’s Federal Reserve dollars to buy Bitcoins. And then he’ll pay off the national debt with it!
Sure, Jan. What could go wrong, buying a highly volatile commodity at the highest price it’s ever been, which is backed by nothing, has no intrinsic value and becomes completely inaccessible if you happen to lose the keys (a whoops that has already happened to 20 percent of the coins)?
Of course the bill is a stupid acronym name — the Boosting Innovation, Technology, and Competitiveness through Optimized Investment Nationwide Act of 2024. BITCOIN, GET IT?! And it would require the US Treasury to buy one million Bitcoins over five years, to be held for at least 20 years, to create a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. Here, watch her yowl about it, if you want. [video at the link]
Long story short, Lummis and Guy Who Bankrupted His Own Casino want Congress to cash out the government’s assets and give the actual money to the cryptobros, by buying up their Bitcoin. And then the government will be left with an asset that could be worth a fraction of the purchase price tomorrow! Which is a problem, because most of the government’s debt is owned by the US, in the form of Treasury securities: bills, bonds, notes and Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities. And when those securities mature, in weeks or years, the government has promised to pay the holders in cash, not in some fraction of a Bitcoin […]
If investors wanted to invest in Bitcoin, or magic beans, or whatever volatile, risky security, they could just go buy some themselves. The only advantage Bitcoin has over other investments is that it can’t be traced, making it handy for criminal cartels. (The US actually already owns at least 173,991 Bitcoins, which were seized from Ross Ulbricht, AKA Dread Pirate Roberts, AKA another financial criminal That Man would like to pardon.) Otherwise, Bitcoin is illiquid, easily misplaced, untraceable … not investment features that, say, a teachers’ pension fund would try to be out there shopping for.
Investors and institutions buy government securities because they’re supposed to be risk-free. And if the government can’t pay up on its treasury securities, then the government would be in default, and that would be a big fucking problem. Mostly for the US government itself, but also for foreign governments, and institutional investors, such as many people’s retirement funds and mutual funds. And Warren Buffett, whose Berkshire Hathaway now owns more short-term Treasurys than the Fed itself does, $234.6 billion worth.
And who has a lot of Bitcoins? That is mostly a secret, they are known only by their wallet numbers, but very few investors: the top ten-thousandth of wallet addresses hold 27 percent of the coin. If they all sold, or even a few of them, the market would tank, so big Bitcoin holders are stuck. So Big Bitcoin holders would like it if the US government took their holdings and Rumpelstiltskin-ed them into real gold. And, if the government bought up $100 million worth, their investments would soar. Bitcoin is already up 40 percent YTD, just from the prospect.
One of these big holders is reportedly David O. Sacks, a billionaire South African-American investor and founding member of PayPal who That Man [Trump] has appointed Chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and given the made-up job of “White House AI & Crypto Czar.” And as a “special government employee,” he does not require Senate confirmation or full financial disclosure. He’s buddies with Peter Thiel, natch, and the two of them wrote a book together, The Diversity Myth, about how diversity ruined Stanford University. Hilariously, just last year when Silicon Valley Bank collapsed, Davey Sacks was all for bank regulation, squeal-Tweeting “Where is Powell? Where is Yellen? Stop the crisis NOW. Announce that all depositors will be safe.” He added, “This will not help the little guy.”
[…] LOL, the little guy! Well, now that you mention it, what would actually help smaller Bitcoin investors would be to define Bitcoin as a security, or a currency, instead of a commodity, like it’s regulated now. And then regulate it whichever way, so that it would not be legal for cryptobros to collude to pump dump Bitcoin on the US government or anybody else. But weird, the cryptobros do not want any crypto regulation at all, as that would be mean busybodies trying to stifle free speech! The free exchange between a fool and their money that they want to part them with.
Which kinda tips you off right there that it’s a scam, no?
Watch this excellent report from Chris Hayes the other night [video at the link, worth watching]
whheydtsays
Re: Lynna, OM @ #332…
If you can “become Trump” in the game, does that mean that one of things you can buy–or otherwise obtain–are cheat codes?
Thousands of victims have sued Apple over its alleged failure to detect and report illegal child pornography, also known as child sex abuse materials (CSAM).
The proposed class action comes after Apple scrapped a controversial CSAM-scanning tool last fall that was supposed to significantly reduce CSAM spreading in its products. Apple defended its decision to kill the tool after dozens of digital rights groups raised concerns that the government could seek to use the functionality to illegally surveil Apple users for other reasons. Apple also was concerned that bad actors could use the functionality to exploit its users and sought to protect innocent users from false content flags.
Child sex abuse survivors suing have accused Apple of using the cybersecurity defense to ignore the tech giant’s mandatory CSAM reporting duties. If they win over a jury, Apple could face more than $1.2 billion in penalties. And perhaps most notably for privacy advocates, Apple could also be forced to “identify, remove, and report CSAM on iCloud and implement policies, practices, and procedures to prevent continued dissemination of CSAM or child sex trafficking on Apple devices and services.” That could mean a court order to implement the controversial tool or an alternative that meets industry standards for mass-detecting CSAM…
A plan to impeach South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol over his short-lived declaration of martial law has failed after members of his governing party left parliament on Saturday ahead of the planned vote. Lawmakers from the People Power Party (PPP) were shouted and cursed at as they left en masse after voting on a separate motion, leaving the 192 opposition lawmakers eight votes short of the two-thirds majority needed for the impeachment motion to succeed.
Also from NBC News:
The South Korean government on Monday ordered an overseas travel ban on President Yoon Suk Yeol as he faces investigation on possible rebellion charges over a short-lived martial law declaration that plunged the key U.S. ally into chaos last week.
The United Nations’ chief nuclear inspector said on Friday that Iran was quadrupling its production of near-bomb-grade material, a move likely to intensify the challenge it will pose to the incoming Trump administration — but one that might also open the way to a new negotiation with the West.
Convoluted reasoning. Will have to wait for more developments regarding this developing story.
Mark McAfee, the California raw milk producer who has been at the center of several bird-flu-related product recalls, says a transition team for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has encouraged him to apply for a position at the Food and Drug Administration.
Donald Trump has been publicly insistent for months about his supposed position on the social safety net programs Medicare and Social Security: he will not cut a dollar from their budgets. [What Donald Trump says is either meaningless or a lie, or both. Watch what he and his fellow Republicans do, not what they say.]
But that, of course, comes as his allies in Congress privately discuss offsetting the cost of extending his 2017 tax cuts with “reforms” targeting Medicaid and food stamps, and as he appoints the supremely unqualified TV doctor Mehmet Oz to head up the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid in his new administration, with vows to “cut waste and fraud within our Country’s most expensive Government Agency.”
As TPM has been reporting, it’s a familiar rhetorical dance for Republicans as they seek to slash social safety net programs that provide invaluable assistance to America’s most vulnerable, couched in the language of “reforms.” While there has been some veiled language tossed around about cutting out “waste” and “fraud” as Trump and his allies salivate about the possible ways to deploy the Elon Musk-Vivek Ramaswamy “efficiency” department, other House Republicans are being explicit about using the cover provided by the unit to make substantial cuts to entitlements.
Just last week, Rep. Rich McCormick (R-GA) told Fox Business News that he’s going to work on helping his Republican colleagues “stomach” making cuts to the programs. A few days later, Rep. Ralph Norman gave a rather blunt response when asked if the Department of Government Efficiency would put Medicare on the chopping block: “Nothing is sacrosanct. Nothing.”
This morning, Missouri Republican Rep. Mark Alford made similar noises about “waste, abuse and fraud in Medicare” before resurrecting another disingenuous “reform” line on Social Security that’s been floated by right-wingers in the past: pushing back the retirement age.
“We all agree this is an unsustainable area that we’re in right now — almost $36 trillion in debt, and we are spending more on the interest on our debt than we are going to spend on the National Defense Authorization Act this year,” he told Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo Monday.
“And so we’ve got to right the ship, and it’s going to mean cuts. It’s going to mean cuts to the 24 percent of the discretionary spending that we have, and it’s also going to mean looking long-term at the front end of some programs like Social Security and Medicare,” he continued. “… There is some waste, abuse and fraud in Medicare that we can take those numbers back and add to our general coffers and our treasury.”
“And on the front end on Social Security, I think there’s a way, when people are living longer, they’re retiring later, then on the front end we can move that retirement age back a little bit,” he said.
The lies about slashing the social safety net are a surprise only to voters who took Trump at his word when he said to raucous applause on the campaign trail: “I will cut all of the bad talk about Social Security. They’re going to destroy your Social Security, but I will not cut 1 cent from Social Security or Medicare.”
Fox News commentators Harris Faulkner and Larry Kudlow classed up the airwaves Monday by sleazily suggesting that first lady Jill Biden is attracted to Donald Trump and his “power.”
Kudlow kicked off the rancid ramblings during a discussion of the first lady’s attendance at the Saturday reopening of the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, and her interaction with Trump.
“There’s no question in my mind that Jill Biden voted for Donald Trump,” Kudlow said. “I think Joe may have, but I’m certain Jill had because they were flirting so much in the thing,” he claimed, prompting cackles from the other people on the panel.
President Joe Biden did not attend the festivities and Trump was seated near the first lady. The two were photographed chatting cordially, which was apparently enough for right-wingers to launch into depraved fantasies.
Trump’s late addition to the ceremony forced French officials to stick President Emanuel Macron’s wife, Brigitte Macron, between the incoming president and Jill Biden […]
“I mean, clearly, she gravitates to power,” Faulkner added, prompting hoots and whoops from other lowlifes in the studio. “Yeah, I’m just going to say it because it’s the truth. So she’s gravitating toward power and the shiniest object in the room at that moment, the one with the really good lighting, Molly, is Donald Trump. So she goes over and she kind of soaks that lighting up.” [video at the link]
Not to be outdone, the morally decrepit Trump used images from the event to help hype the announcement of his latest scam: a cologne that manages to be offensive to the nostrils and the eyes. He promoted its release with an image of him and the first lady at the ceremony.
“A fragrance your enemies can’t resist!” read the caption.
The Fox News hosts’ debased stances are just a reflection of the moral degeneracy prevalent in the Republican Party. Whether it’s ignoring Defense Secretary nominee Pete Hegseth’s history of womanizing, alleged sexual assault, and alcoholism, or not making a peep when on-air “talent” Jesse Watters joked about Vice President Kamala Harris being raped, the message is clear: The conservative movement has lost every ounce of integrity with Trump at the helm.
I see Trump taking advantage of the fact that Jill Biden is polite, and of the fact that Macron’s wife was temporarily absent from her seat between Trump and Jill Biden. I give Jill Biden kudos for managing to look like she was not cringing as Trump leans toward her.
Posted by readers of the article:
🤮🤮🤮 is all I can come up with.
———————–
The look she’s giving him in the picture above is of strained tolerance.
————————–
It was his way of violating her, after she was polite and dignified to him. Absolutely vile but the expected sort of thing a repeat rapist does.
Her crusade against transgender bathroom access has cemented her role as a hardline culture warrior […] The lurid clip shows Mace, 47, [passing liquor mouth-to-mouth serially among four people: the second wearing a Trump shirt, the third passes it on then vomits, beside the fourth choking it down.]
[…]
the boozy episode was filmed while twice-divorced Mace was campaigning for Donald Trump’s 2016 Presidential campaign. It was leaked to social media when she ran for the South Carolina State House in 2017 […] The mom-of-two won the seat regardless
Neat. I stumbled on a comment formatting trick. Markdown links.
[label](url “optional hover text”)
They’re equivelent to “a href= title=” tags.
To make the formula visible, I put a backslash before the left bracket. The blog being clever like this means square brackets may behave strangely and require a backslash if you intend something else.
Trickier still are reference-style links. You bracket up [some text][1] with a citation number. Then devote a line at the bottom to set its url and hover text.
[1]: url “hover text”
It liooks like this: some text
I discovered all this as I naively tried to write CW in brackets with a colon, and my whole line disappeared from the comment preview, until I backslashed it.
A lesser disappearance occurs if you start a line with hyphen or asterisk or 1. 2. 3., which would be markdown lists, but do nothing here. I’ve known about for a while as a pitfall; never got em to work. Might be forbidden like embedded images.
Markdown is why asterisks around words become italic or bold. None of this Markdown formatting works within html blockquote tags. Markdown blockquoting allows it, but that method is tedious.
It’s not a syntax I like for commenting, but it helps to know why things break.
Bekenstein Boundsays
Prepending “cache:” to the stuck-spinning URL is what seems to have become extremely unreliable.
Meanwhile, we’re getting Star Trek’s hyposprays and Pandora’s Star’s OCTattoos? Cool!
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Re: Bekenstein Bound @345:
Oh, the google search operator (cache:someurl).
Google said it would do this after removing the cache link from the search result snippets back in January of this year but has not done until nine-months later.
* Via a link there: I found Google’s Wayback link. They buried it. Triple-dot a search result, sidebar’s “more about this page” button, scroll to the borrom, “See previous versions on Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine”. Not worth the effort getting to it.
During his latest appearance on “Meet the Press,” Donald Trump brought up the election’s popular vote unprompted. “One thing that’s very important, in terms of the election, I love that I won the popular vote — and by a lot,” the president-elect boasted.
The claim was demonstrably foolish: Trump won the popular vote, fair and square, but according to the latest tallies, the margin was 1.48%. It might make the incoming Republican president feel better to think he won the popular vote by “a lot,” but in reality, the margin was among the closest in American history.
[…] the morning after the “Meet the Press” episode aired, the president-elect published an item to his social media platform that was apparently intended to extend the conversation. The entire missive read in its entirety:
The Democrats are fighting hard to get rid of the Popular Vote in future Elections. They want all future Presidential Elections to be based exclusively on the Electoral College!
Even by Trump standards, this was bizarre.
There are no Democrats “fighting hard” to eliminate the popular vote in future elections. That doesn’t even make sense at the most basic level: The popular vote simply refers to the cumulative total of ballots cast for each candidate. To “get rid of” the popular vote would mean ending the practice of counting votes.
As for the idea that Democrats “want all future Presidential Elections to be based exclusively on the Electoral College,” this is every bit as baffling. In the United States, presidential elections are already based on the Electoral College. This isn’t a model Democrats are demanding; it’s literally the status quo that’s been in place for centuries.
What’s more, if Trump is convinced that Democrats are somehow eager to champion the Electoral College and leave the system untouched, I’d remind the Republican that there’s overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Not only did a recent Pew Research Center study find that 80% of Democratic voters support scrapping the Electoral College and moving to a model based on the popular vote, but a great many leading Democratic officials believe the same thing, as evidenced by Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s public comments less than a month before Election Day. [Embedded links available at the main link.]
At this point, I could marvel for a few more paragraphs about how ridiculous it was to see Trump peddle such a delusional lie, but perhaps there’s a more constructive way to approach this. In fact, this might be an instance in which Democrats — whose presidential ticket has won the popular vote in seven of the last nine national elections — benefit from calling Trump’s bluff.
If Trump is serious about prioritizing the popular vote and discarding the Electoral College, Democrats have plenty of reasons to enthusiastically endorse such an overhaul.
Would the Republican leader take yes for an answer?
Paul Krugman announces his retirement from The New York Times and reflects on the past 25 years:
This is my final column for The New York Times, where I began publishing my opinions in January 2000. I’m retiring from The Times, not the world, so I’ll still be expressing my views in other places. But this does seem like a good occasion to reflect on what has changed over these past 25 years.
What strikes me, looking back, is how optimistic many people, both here and in much of the Western world, were back then and the extent to which that optimism has been replaced by anger and resentment. And I’m not just talking about members of the working class who feel betrayed by elites; some of the angriest, most resentful people in America right now — people who seem very likely to have a lot of influence with the incoming Trump administration — are billionaires who don’t feel sufficiently admired. […]
And it wasn’t that long ago that technology billionaires were widely admired across the political spectrum, some achieving folk-hero status. But now they and some of their products face disillusionment and worse; Australia has even banned social media use by children under 16.
Which brings me back to my point that some of the most resentful people in America right now seem to be angry billionaires.
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said there were more than 100 strikes on military targets.
A research centre with suspected links to chemical weapon production was among the sites hit, according to local media reports.
Israel says it is acting to stop weapons falling “into the hands of extremists” following the overthrow of the Assad regime.
On Monday, the UN Security Council met to discuss the situation in the country following the downfall of President Bashar al-Assad, and said they will work on a statement in the coming days.
“The council, I think, was more or less united on the need to preserve the territorial integrity and unity of Syria, to ensure the protection of civilians, to ensure that humanitarian aid is coming to the needy population,” Russian UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia told reporters.
A lot of observers are worried about chemical weapons and other weapons falling into the hands of extremists.
Andrea Rizzi of El País in English offers analysis of how interconnected geopolitical crises brought about the fall of Bashar al-Assad.
What a popular uprising unsuccessfully attempted in 2011 was achieved in 2024 by the confluence of several major geopolitical crises. The sudden collapse of the dictatorial regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria is a striking example of the interconnectedness of the upheavals shaking up the world. Its downfall has come about from the weakening — on two different but interconnected fronts — of its main allies. Russia is suffering the enormous wear and tear of its invasion of Ukraine. Iran and Hezbollah have been weakened by Israel’s blows in its reaction to the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023.
Iran, as is well known, provides important military support to the Kremlin in its illegal offensive in Ukraine. Both kept the Assad regime on its feet for years. All three were part of a heterodox galaxy of regimes closing ranks in an attempt to reshape the world order in a way more favorable to their own interests. China is the biggest supporter of both Russia, by means of the injection of essential commercial oxygen, and of Iran, from which it buys large quantities of oil, circumventing U.S. sanctions. But the Assad regime was completely rotten, and a greatly weakened Russia and Iran could no longer sustain it. Its adversaries — a mix of actors that includes radical Islamists and militias backed by Turkey — understood all this perfectly.
Several upcoming events have once again reintroduced the issue of Donald Trump personally profiting from political fundraising.
The Washington Post reports that Make America Great Again, Inc., the top pro-Trump super PAC, plans to host an event at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club for donors who pay $1 million per person. Those who cut a check will be served dinner by candlelight and get to meet Trump, billed as the “special guest” for the event.
Holding the event on Trump’s property means that the PAC will surely be paying the venue hosting fees—money that should then find its way into Trump’s personal account. [Double grift.]
House Republicans have similarly announced that they will hold their annual retreat at Trump National Doral in Miami, Florida, in late January. Trump has owned that property since 2012 and will no doubt financially benefit from hosting fees paid by the lawmakers he is set to work with after he is sworn in.
At the same time, the official Trump inauguration committee has announced that it will hold a “candlelight dinner” for donors who have given $1 to $2 million on Jan. 19, the day before Trump is scheduled to be inaugurated. Donors are also being given access to dinners with Vice President-elect JD Vance and his wife, Usha, as well as Trump’s Cabinet nominees (if they haven’t dropped out by then).
After Trump won in 2016, his inauguration committee was the subject of a lawsuit from the Washington, D.C., attorney general. Officials charged that the committee overpaid for accommodations at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, just a few blocks from the White House (Trump no longer owns the hotel). The committee ultimately agreed to pay $750,000 in 2022 to resolve the suit.
Trump has shown time and time again that if he is presented with an opportunity to personally profit from his political position, he will take it. Recently, that has taken the shape of Trump-branded fragrances, guitars, gold sneakers, and cryptocurrency—among many other objects.
Now that he has secured the most powerful office in the world, the grift is back in overdrive.
The “brave” Assad ran away to Putin. Where will Putin run away?
This year’s Human Rights Day is marked by heartbreaking images of Syrian prisons and torture chambers, which were opened after Assad ran away. People have been humiliated there for many years. Men and women. They were beaten, tortured, raped. Thousands upon thousands of people have passed through this violence factory.
For decades, the Assad regime has relied solely on violence. And this is what all Putin-backed regimes look like. We have seen these types of prisons, torture chambers, unspeakable violence, humiliation, beating, torture, rape, and other crimes on our territory in every location occupied by Russian invaders.
Russia is a prison state and it can only keep hold of someone else’s stolen land by putting its prisons and torture chambers there.
Since the beginning of the Russian occupation, tanks have been followed by repression and torture. We first saw it on our land in Crimea in 2014, when Russian occupation resulted in repression of the indigenous people, Ukraine’s largest Muslim community, the Crimean Tatars, as well as journalists and political figures. Then Russia continued its horrific human rights violations in the occupied Donbas, including the notorious Izolyatsia prison.
Since February 2022, Russia has expanded these practices to the rest of the occupied territories. Atrocities have increased in scope and brutality.
This is why we, as Ukrainians, feel so moved when we see Syrians walking out of Assad’s prisons and torture chambers.
Assad and Putin are more than just vassal and lord. They are accomplices in violence. Dictators like Assad cannot survive without dictators like Putin. And Putin will try to get a revenge for Assad’s fall.
This is why we need unity and strength to confront regimes that only sow humiliation and leave nothing but suffering, pain, and ruins in their wake. By assisting Ukraine in its fight against Putin’s dictatorship, the international community is assisting many other regions in restoring security and protection from violence.
There must be justice for the horrific atrocities and human rights violations. In fact, Putin and Assad are the ones who deserve to be imprisoned, not the innocent people they have been imprisoning for years.
[…] The Mangione family is very wealthy, very right wing, and somewhat prominent here in Baltimore. The family owns two country clubs with golf courses — Turf Valley Country Club and golf course in the west Baltimore suburbs and Hayfields Country Club and golf course in Baltimore’s northern suburbs. They also own a chain of nursing homes.
They also own WCBM, the local all talk radio station that spews right wing propaganda 24/7. I won’t link to it. The last time I looked at their website was about 15 years ago and briefly saw the attack on Hillary Clinton and John Kerry as dangerous Communists. They broadcasted Limbaugh plus his local fellow propagandists.
Luigi’s grandfather or great grandfather bought the station decades ago and promptly changed the format from easier listening non rock music to the local Pravda. The elder Mangiones, however had one charity, giving millions of dollars to the Baltimore Opera. The opera, which had been founded in 1940 by opera great Rosa Ponselle, threatened to go under, but the Mangiones pumped in millions every year and kept it going until their deaths, when the opera ceased operations. (After Art Modell moved his Cleveland Browns to Baltimore, he revived the opera with his millions until he and his wife died, and the opera again went out of business.)
Luigi Mangione attended Gilman, an exclusive private boys schools that, aside from a few scholarships, only the wealthiest parents can afford.
Did this young man rebel against his family? Or did they disown him because he wouldn’t follow their views?
Posted by readers of the article:
I’ve thought a lot about this since it happened last week. I need to be expressly clear that murder is murder. It is illegal. Luigi Mangione is not a hero, he’s a murderer. And even more ridiculous is the idea that assassinating the head of one of these corrupt institutions which serves against the interest of healthcare by prioritizing profit would somehow make the institution itself less corrupt is crazy talk. The problem is the institution, not the individual who was assassinated. Or rather, the CEO who was assassinated is a small cog in a giant grinding wheel of corruption. Taking that cog out does not stop the wheel.
At the same time, this has sparked a conversation and brought attention in a very focused way to the corrupt institution of health insurance in this country. I find that so conflicting, because that was murder, but it has started a necessary conversation. The fact of all of the people proclaiming Luigi Mangione a hero has just put focus and fuel on that discussion. I think each one of us individually have always railed against the concept of for-profit healthcare being anything other than damaging. To individuals, to the country, you name it. But this assassination has really centered that discussion and I think a lot of people who also generally agreed that for-profit health insurance in this country is fucked have seen how widely their personal view is shared.
So from that perspective, there is an element indicating that what this guy did has worked on some level. It’s so conflicting.
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CEOs as individuals can and have materially made companies’ better or worse for their employees and/or customers. Its not just the system, but certain corporate systems can promote an executive to more immoral heights. I have read that this CEO individually contributed to making rules for more denials and roadblocks against their customers.
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He was not disinherited. He had recently lost touch with his family and friends, but his family had tried to reach out to him.
Uninformed speculation doesn’t do the site any favors, though I understand it’s a natural tendency.
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Tuition [at Gilman private school] is almost $38,000/year. In his valedictorian speech, Mangione thanked his parents for the financial investment in his education there, though clearly his family could afford it.
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The media called him an anti-capitalist, but his Xitter feed showed he liked and retweeted Musk, Thiel, Tucker Carlson. He complained about “wokeism.”
I think this may be a case of mental illness, like the Unabomber.
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There is no evidence he had mental illness. His writing is lucid, if unwell. The mentally ill in this country suffer enough without being saddled with the weight of every atrocious crime on their shoulders.
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his Twitter feed looks reasonably libertarian/right-wing, and he stopped contact with his family only a few months ago, presumably so they wouldn’t talk him out of this, or wouldn’t get implicated in any way
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Twenty-six is adult, and our brains reportedly are still developing till age 25 (though from personal experience, developing wisdom can take quite a bit longer).
I don’t think it’s right to equate a temporary lack of mature political judgement with the choice of cold-blooded assasination
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And right on cue, Cancun Cruz [Senator Ted Cruz] called him a leftist. These bastards are so-o-o predictable…
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Lorien Health Services [owned the rich family of the shooter] and they suck.
He volunteered there for 5 months and likely saw how bad it was for the patients.
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The only people who are rich enough to not need to worry about medical care are those who pay out of pocket for anything. “Good” insurance can not be purchased at any cost. They will all deny care when you need it and leave you with a seven figure bill when you get it anyway.
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From the Independent: Several members of Luigi Mangione book club “left” after the Brian Thompson murder suspect made members read the memoir of Ted Kaczynski – aka the Unabomber.
….In early 2023, Mangione started a book club in Hawaii, according to Sarah Nehemiah, who was Mangione when they both lived at a co-living space in Honolulu in 2022.
“Several members left due to discomfort in his book choices,” she told The Washington Post.
“The Unabomber Manifesto is what really pushed people over the edge.”
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Cancun Cruz sez Luigi is a woke leftist, never mind that Luigi is apparently a fan of Tucker Carlson. It’s interesting that Cancun Cruz, a Harvard trained lawyer, has no problem commenting on a criminal case that’s just in its beginning stages. If Cancun Cruz were Mangione’s lawyer, I wonder how he would feel about a U.S. Senator weighing in on his client. I’ll give Cancun Cruz this, he’s consistent. Consistently awful.
Microsoft, trying to mitigate the climate impact of its data center building boom, is starting to roll out a new design that uses zero water to cool the facilities’ chips and servers. From a report:
Launched in August, the new design will eliminate the more than 125 million liters of water each data center typically uses per year, the company said in a statement. The new system use a “closed loop” to recycle water; liquid is added during construction and continually circulated — obviating the need for fresh supplies. Data centers will still require fresh water for worker facilities like bathrooms and kitchens…
Traditional DDR memory operates within a certain temperature window—often around 100 degrees Celsius or less—and going beyond that window will result in potential data loss and thermal throttling. Researchers at the University of Michigan have developed a new memory architecture that quite literally behaves the opposite of DDR memory, featuring an operating window of at least 500 degrees Fahrenheit (250 degrees Celsius) and can run at over 1,100 degrees Fahrenheit (600 degrees Celsius).
This unorthodox memory design takes advantage of properties found in batteries to store data at extraordinary temperatures. Data is stored by moving negatively charged oxygen atoms between two layers inside the memory, a semiconductor tantalum oxide and metal tantalum. These oxygen atoms are transferred between the two (different) tantalum layers through a solid electrolyte that behaves like a barrier, keeping the oxygen atoms from bouncing between one layer and the other…
The researchers point out that this oxygen atom-based memory solution operates at such a high minimum temperature that heaters might be required to get the memory up to operating temperature before it can start working…
“Tulsi Gabbard Had A Big Day In Washington While Her Bud Assad Was Fleeing To Moscow”
“Just a normal Monday for the incoming Trump regime.”
If you’re like us, watching Tulsi Gabbard, Donald Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence, traipse around Capitol Hill yesterday, begging senators to forget all the reasons it’s a bad idea to let her see America’s intelligence secrets, you might have felt sorry for her.
After all, it had been fewer than 24 hours since Bashar al-Assad, the deposed Syrian dictator, had been run out of his country and straight into the arms of Vladimir Putin in Russia. Considering her track record as an apologist for Assad, we wouldn’t be surprised to find out she was worried. When it turned out the Assads were going to Moscow, man, that must’ve been like that feeling where two of your oldest, best friends are in the same town, and they’re having a slumber party, and you’re not even in the same time zone.
Are they having fun without her in Moscow? […] we and everybody else know the rest of her history when it comes to those two dictators, and why Democrats and Republicans alike are worried at the prospect of her having access to the products of the American intelligence community.
At the same time, we imagine she was just happy to know the Assads were safe, and was committed to the task at hand of swindling senators, because WHOA, can you believe there’s a president who’s enough of an anti-American turncoat that he’d nominate Tulsi Gabbard as DNI? That is some seriously crazy shit, man!
Gabbard is of course likely already facing lots of questions from senators about why she secretly went to hang out with Assad in 2017, why she wouldn’t call him an enemy of the US, why she was so eager to accept Assad’s version of events about the Syrian war, why she’s always been so skeptical that Assad used chemical weapons on his own people, why she’s always willing to barf out any Kremlin conspiracy theory the GRU comes up with, and so forth. (Some new reporting suggests Gabbard is just incredibly stupid and unable to discern the difference between good information and bad information.)
There have already been rumblings that her nomination might be the most difficult of Trump’s clown car of deplorables to get confirmed.
She told reporters yesterday that she agrees with Trump that the United States should stay out of whatever is happening in Syria right now:
“My own views and experiences have been shaped by my multiple deployments and seeing firsthand the cost of war and the threat of Islamist terrorism,” Gabbard said. “It’s one of the many reasons why I appreciate President Trump’s leadership and his election where he is fully committed, as he has said over and over, to bringing about an end to wars, demonstrating peace through strength and putting the national security interests and the safety, security and freedom of the American people, first and foremost.”
Uh huh, sure, right, “America first,” you betcha.
WaPo notes that a number of Republican senators are already OK to just roll over for whatever Trump wants, which we guess includes possible national security threats like Gabbard, and that over 250 veterans had signed a letter supporting her nomination. They’re calling themselves American Veterans for Tulsi Gabbard and acting like they’re just normal veterans. Of course one of the most prominent signatories on that letter was Michael Flynn, who is most famous for secretly cahoots-ing with the Russian government and lying to the FBI about it. [!!! Not normal veterans.]
So …
Other stories are starting to go around Capitol Hill too, and in the media.
NBC News has the fascinating and horrifying tale of a House Foreign Affairs Committee meeting that happened in 2018, when Gabbard was a Democratic congresswoman. A Syrian defector — somebody who did not support the murderous dictator Assad — was going to testify behind closed doors, and aides to both Democratic and Republican congressmen were worried what might happen if Gabbard saw that Syrian defector’s face. They were worried Gabbard might burn the defector to the Assad regime. So they — Democrats and Republicans both — made sure to tell the defector, who they were calling “Caesar,” to cover his face when Gabbard was around.
“It was Democratic and Republican staffers on the committee coordinating with me to figure out how do we make sure that Tulsi doesn’t take a photograph of Caesar, or learn his real name, or record his voice,” said Mouaz Moustafa, executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force who helped organize Caesar’s appearance and translated for the session.
NBC News notes that, unlike the conservative veterans who think Gabbard is just great, “nearly 100 former diplomats, national security officials and intelligence officials wrote to Senate leaders expressing alarm at Gabbard’s nomination.” They want closed-door confirmation hearings, so they can really muck through Gabbard’s muck. “Several of Ms. Gabbard’s past actions call into question her ability to deliver unbiased intelligence briefings to the President, Congress, and to the entire national security apparatus,” says the letter.
This quote from a former senior intelligence official says a lot:
“She basically completely adopted the Assad regime propaganda, where she suggested falsely that the U.S. was supporting terrorist extremists in Syria, and didn’t mention that the Assad regime had been slaughtering fellow Syrians there,” the former official said. “So what does that say about her judgment?”
People are wondering if Five Eyes — AKA the intelligence alliance of the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand — will continue sharing intel with us if Gabbard is DNI. (They probably shouldn’t, quite frankly.)
People are wondering why Gabbard literally thinks the Russian invasion of Ukraine was NATO’s fault.
Compromised, stupid, or both?
Just after Russia’s tanks crossed the Ukrainian border and starting slicing babies’ heads off in 2022, Tulsi Gabbard put this video on Twitter calling on Vladimir Putin, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and for some reason Joe Biden to “embrace the spirit of aloha.” (Yes, she said that.) She demanded Ukraine be a neutral country, not allowed to have military alliances that upset Russia.
You know, for fuckin’ “aloha” purposes. [video at the link]
That’s the totally serious person Donald Trump wants to give the keys to all America’s most secret intelligence, including stuff he hasn’t even stolen and taken to Mar-a-Lago yet.
Here, have a news report about all the people horrified by the prospect of Tulsi Gabbard. [video at the link]
Compromised, stupid, or both? Not sure we’ll ever know.
Russia is providing sanctuary to Bashar al-Assad, having transported the former Syrian leader there “in the most secure way possible” after the swift collapse of his regime, Russia’s deputy foreign minister told NBC News in an exclusive interview Tuesday.
“He is secured, and it shows that Russia acts as required in such an extraordinary situation,” Sergei Ryabkov said, becoming the first Russian official to confirm Assad’s presence in the country.
“I have no idea what is going on with him right now,” Ryabkov said, adding that it “would be very wrong for me to elaborate on what happened and how it was resolved.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin has been dealt a huge blow by the collapse of a regime to which he gave his full support, helping Assad cling to power after Syria descended into civil war and maintain his family’s brutal dynasty, which began in 1971.
And Ryabkov said Russia would continue to support the Syrian leader whose regime has been accused by human rights groups, whistleblowers and former detainees of attacks with chemical weapons and barrel bombs and other war crimes, as well as murder, systematic torture and the enforced disappearance of tens of thousands of people since the 2011 mass uprising, which sparked that conflict.
“Russia is not a party to the convention that established the International Criminal Court,” Ryabkov said when asked if the Kremlin would hand over Assad for trial.
Syria has not joined the court, which is based in the Hague, Netherlands, and has not accepted its jurisdiction. Russia and China blocked an attempt to impose its jurisdiction in 2014. The United States and Israel also do not recognize the jurisdiction of the ICC, which has no police to enforce its warrants.
Separately, in March 2023, the court issued an arrest warrant for Putin for “war crimes” in overseeing the unlawful abduction and deportation of children from Ukraine to Russia.
And last month, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant over alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza. Israel rejected the charges and the U.S. said it rejected the decision.
[…] Whoever ends up governing Syria, be it the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) militant group, which led rebel forces as they stormed across Syria, or someone else, Ryabkov said, Russia “forcefully and strongly” believes that Syria “should be sovereign, unified and integral.”
“We will not have a situation there, hopefully, that will mean separation of parts of Syria from one another,” he added.
He also urged Israel “to seriously consider what is going on in the Golan Heights,” after Netanyahu ordered his military to seize control of the demilitarized and U.N.-patrolled buffer zone with Syria that was established under a 1974 cease-fire agreement. Israel, Ryabkov said, should observe that agreement and it should “not infringe” on Syria’s territorial integrity.
One thing Russia did share with the U.S. was concerns about the potential for the re-emergence of the Islamic State terrorist group in Syria, he said. The U.S. has launched multiple airstrikes on ISIS targets in Syria, where it maintains a small force.
On a separate matter, Ryabkov added that the Kremlin would “definitely be prepared to consider” another prisoner swap, similar to the one in August that resulted in the release of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and three other U.S. residents from Russian captivity.
Deals like this required “a multiphased or multistep approach on both sides,” including in some cases, the pardoning of those serving sentences. Several other countries, including Germany and Slovenia, were involved in the deal mediated by Turkey.
While he did not “want to pre-empt anything,” Ryabkov said such deals help improve the relationship between Russia and the U.S., adding that a new deal would be “a healthy step forward, especially at the beginning of the next administration.”
While Syria celebrates overthrowing its longtime dictator, it is also being subjected to a new ground incursion and a wave of airstrikes from its neighbor Israel that drew growing international condemnation and concern Tuesday.
Explosions rocked Damascus overnight, smoke billowed from a research center north of the capital and destroyed naval ships sat in the western port of Latakia — all while Israeli ground forces moved into Syrian territory.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said Tuesday that he had order the military to establish a “sterile defense zone” in southern Syria, as Israeli forces seize control of the demilitarized and U.N.-patrolled buffer zone, established under a 1974 ceasefire agreement.
Israel says that its airstrikes and actions on the ground are aimed at preventing Assad’s arsenal of rockets and chemical weapons falling into the hands of extremists who could threaten its borders or people.
But its advance has raised alarm at a time when the international community is already nervous about further instability as Syria navigates its transition away from 53 years of Assad rule. Arab powers condemned the incursion Tuesday, accusing Israel of violating international law and exploiting the chaos in Syria. […]
Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Israel’s “attempts to occupy Syrian lands will lead the region to more violence and tensions,” calling the move a “flagrant violation of international law.”
Saudi Arabia said the actions “confirm Israel’s continued violations of the principles of international law,” and called upon the international community to respect Syria’s “territorial integrity.” Iran also condemned the Israeli military’s movements, describing them as a violation of the United Nations Charter and calling for immediate action from the U.N. Security Council.
[…] Photos from news agencies also showed sunken Syrian naval ships in the port city of Latakia, with smoke billowing from the wreckage after they were laid to waste by Israeli air strikes.
At least two explosions were heard in the area of Barzeh, near Damascus, where the Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Centre has an office, three witnesses in the neighborhood told Reuters. News agency photos showed the site destroyed on Tuesday. [images at the link]
[…] this also closes the door on any form of diplomacy between the new Syrian state and Israel, at least for a time.
“The good news for health care advocates is that the Affordable Care Act’s popularity is still growing. There is, however, some less-than-good news.”
[…] 62% of Americans believe it’s the federal government’s responsibility to ensure all Americans have health care coverage, which is the opposite of what Republican officials have long argued. Gallup also found that support for a government-run system has reached near parity with support for a model based mostly on private health insurance.
For ACA proponents, this is the good news. There is, however, plenty of less-than-good news.
[…] Trump appeared on “Meet the Press” and struggled mightily to speak intelligently on the issue. Over the course of roughly a minute, the Republican president-elect told NBC News’ Kristen Welker that he has “concepts of a plan that would be better” than the status quo — repeating an unfortunate line from his debate performance in September — before conceding that he still doesn’t have an actual plan, despite nearly a decade of effort.
As part of the same exchange, Trump claimed that “Obamacare stinks” — voters apparently disagree — before concluding, “I am the one that saved Obamacare,” which remains utterly bonkers.
In case that weren’t quite enough, [Trump] added that Americans would have “much better health care right now” if the U.S. Supreme Court had torn down the ACA altogether, though he didn’t explain why.
For those concerned with their family’s health security as Republicans prepare to take the reins of power, the comments hardly inspired confidence.
What’s more, for health care advocates, Trump’s bizarre on-air comments weren’t the only area of concern. It appears increasingly likely, for example, that the new GOP-led Congress will end Democratic subsidies, increase ACA premiums and push millions of Americans into the ranks of the uninsured.
As for officials on Capitol Hill, as recently as late October, House Speaker Mike Johnson unexpectedly targeted the Affordable Care Act, telling a Pennsylvania audience to expect “massive” health care changes in the United States if Trump returned to power. “Health care reform’s going to be a big part of the agenda,” the GOP leader added.
The House speaker later claimed that he was taken out of context, but a video from the event didn’t do him any favors. When an attendee asked at the event, “No Obamacare?” Congress’ top Republican leader replied, “No Obamacare.”
Soon after, Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah declared online, “Kill Obamacare now.” […]
birgerjohanssonsays
In case Mango Mussolini makes things unendurable, here is some useful stuff to know.
The Netherlands and Sweden are the two non-anglophone countries where people have the best english skills, so you can probably get along fine there.
The sudden collapse of the dictatorial regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria is a striking example of the interconnectedness of the upheavals shaking up the world. – Andrew Rizzi quoted by Lynna, OM@354
That interconnectedness is itself worrying, irrespective of the parties involved in the various “upheavals”: it was such interconnectedness that enabled the assassination of an archduke trigger WW1.
A lot of observers are worried about chemical weapons and other weapons falling into the hands of extremists. – Lynna, OM@352
If Bashar al-Assad wasn’t an extremist (he did, after all, actually use chemical weapons against his own people), that label has no meaning. Sure, the record of the apparent leader of the new rulers is hardly reassuring, and the prospects for peace and freedom in Syria are less than rosy, but I’m actually more worried about the rogue state that feels entitled to launch an undeclared war involving both heavy bombing and actual invasion against a neighbouring state while it is at its weakest – and that rogue state has a leader drunk with military success, desperate to abort his trial for corruption, and possesses nuclear weapons.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Re: Lynna @357:
Posted by readers of the article:
Twenty-six is adult, and our brains reportedly are still developing till age 25 […] a temporary lack of mature political judgement
You may heard that if you’re under 25, your brain isn’t fully developed yet. It’s an adage supposing that individuals under 25 can’t think things through or make rational decisions, and so are less responsible than older folk. This logic has now formed the basis of official government advice, sentencing, and more. The only problem with this fact is… it’s not a fact. Never has been.
[…]
there’s no actual data set or specific study that can be invoked or pointed at as the obvious source of the claim […] It could be a misunderstanding, stemming from brain scanning studies which looked at subjects up to the age of 25. But that’s like saying sprinters can only run 100 metres at most after watching the 100m final at the Olympics. The limit is imposed by the context, not biology. Others argue that 25 is simply a pleasing-sounding number, and the idea caught on purely as a result.
[…]
Exactly when ‘developing’ and ‘maturation’ ends is tricky to pin down. The human is essentially an assemblage of many different regions, of varying degrees of complexity, maturing at different rates.
[…]
isn’t like the building of a house. You don’t have to wait until all the walls and floors are done […] It’s more like evolution. There were many evolutionary species between the primitive rodent-like creatures that were the first mammals, and modern-day humans. But each of these stages was, at that point, a fully functional, successful species. There were no unworkable intermediary species […] Even if you believe that people under 25 aren’t ‘as good’ at decision-making as older people, it doesn’t mean they can’t do it, or shouldn’t be allowed to.
[…]
Let’s take it further. Suppose the argument is that your reasoning abilities must function at maximum before you can decide anything important. In that case, we need a maximum age too […] some studies suggest our cognition truly starts to decline in our twenties. This would suggest there’s maybe a window of a few months when we can be ‘trusted’ to make decisions.
[…] “Trump had a long and rambling sit down with ‘Meet the Press’ yesterday,” Kimmel said. Trump’s doozy of an interview was a typhoon of lies and threats. At one point, Trump insisted, repeatedly, that the United States is the only country that has “birthright citizenship.”
”It is not even close to true,” Kimmel deadpanned, showing a map of the many countries that have guaranteed citizenship for people born within their borders. “Donald Trump believes that if you want American citizenship, you have to do it the old-fashioned way: You have to move here from Slovenia, get a modeling contract, and marry the first orange millionaire you meet,” Kimmel joked.
Unable to provide any further details of his “concepts” of a health care plan, Trump disparaged the Affordable Care Act while also claiming personal responsibility for saving it, and insuring tens of millions of people. “He saved Obamacare like that volcano saved Pompeii. It’s mysterious,” Kimmel said, referring to the millions of people who lost their health coverage during Trump’s first go-around in office. “There’s so many lies here, and this guy, he’s got no facts left to give.”
Kimmel moved on to Fox News and how Trump has now poached no less than 12 of their hosts/contributors to fill out positions in his next administration. […]
birgerjohanssonsays
“All 50 Countries in EUROPE Ranked WORST to BEST”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=Uvd-dGZ6PYM
I was surprised by Ireland. As for the Meh ranking of the UK, thank you Boris Johnson and David Cameron. BTW Malta is an arabic-speaking catholic country. Go figure.
Iceland: damper and colder than Britain, but great scenery.
The maker also has a ranking of US states but I have not gone there. Some places are more depressing than post-Brexit Britain.
Customs officials in Vladivostok recently reclassified sliding rail parts used in Chinese furniture, categorizing them alongside furniture parts with bearings, meaning they are now subject to a 55.65 percent duty, the Association of Furniture and Woodworking Enterprises of Russia announced in a November 28 statement.
Weirdly specific and narrow tariff. It could be a trial for more tariffs the government is planning, to see how China responds. It could simply be a move to get some Yuan, which would be handy for buying other things from China. It could be an attempt to move some industry back to Russia.
In any case it’s a good sign of just how fragile the alliance between China and Russia is. Both sides want to leverage the alliance to their advantage but both sides need each other too much to blow it up entirely. Reuters: Russian central bank intervenes as rouble tumbles past 110 to the dollar
Russia’s central bank said on Wednesday it would stop foreign currency purchases in order to ease pressure on the financial markets after the rouble weakened beyond 110 to the U.S. dollar, down by one-third since early August.
Not surprisingly the ruble is in rough shape. The important thing is that the Russian central bank has gone beyond run of the mill moves to shore it up to desperation moves to keep it from falling too far. Stopping currency purchases by the central bank is essentially freezing it’s international price by stopping international trade. It will stabilize the internal market a bit over the short term but it’s just pasting over problems. Russia had been propping it up using money from it’s sovereign wealth fund. They either think that won’t work or they are starting to run out.
The Treasury Department gave Ukraine a $20 billion loan funded by seized Russian assets Tuesday as part of a broader G7 effort to boost the country’s defense.
The money will be transmitted to Ukraine through the World Bank, which received the loan from the U.S. on Tuesday morning. The loan makes up nearly half of the $50 billion G7 Extraordinary Revenue Acceleration (ERA) Loans program, which is intended to help Ukraine with a wide range of war-related expenses.
“These funds – paid for by the windfall proceeds earned from Russia’s own immobilized assets – will provide Ukraine a critical infusion of support as it defends its country against an unprovoked war of aggression,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement.
“The $50 billion collectively being provided by the G7 through this initiative will help ensure Ukraine has the resources it needs to sustain emergency services, hospitals, and other foundations of its brave resistance.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Tuesday he was “deeply grateful” to President Biden, Yellen and lawmakers in both parties who supported using seized Russian assets to bolster Ukraine’s defense.
“This decision is a powerful act of justice. By utilizing Russia’s assets to support Ukraine, the G7 is holding the aggressor accountable,” Zelensky wrote on X.
“This sends a clear and resolute message: Russia must pay for its brutal war, Putin’s regime must face the consequences of its violations of international law, war crimes, and assault on democracy.” […]
The sudden collapse of the dictatorial regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria is a striking example of the interconnectedness of the upheavals shaking up the world…
MILLER: A lot of people don’t realize what’s going on. They view life as a bunch of unconnected incidents and things. They don’t realize that there’s this like, lattice of coincidence that lays on top of everything. I’ll give you an example. Show you what I mean. Suppose you’re thinking about a plate of shrimp. Suddenly, somebody’ll say like, plate, or shrimp, or plate of shrimp. Out of the blue. No explanation. No point looking for one either. It’s all part of the cosmic unconsciousness.
OTTO: Did you do a lot of acid, Miller? Back in the hippie days?
…
Winta is part of a growing group of online creators making ‘rage bait’ content, where the goal is simple: record videos, produce memes and write posts that make other users viscerally angry, then bask in the thousands, or even millions, of shares and likes.
It differs from its internet-cousin clickbait, where a headline is used to tempt a reader to click through to view a video or article.
As marketing podcaster Andrea Jones notes: “A hook reflects what’s in that piece of content and comes from a place of trust, whereas rage-baiting content is designed to be manipulative.” …
The growth in rage baiting content has coincided with the major social media platforms paying creators more for their content.
These creator programs – which reward users for likes, comments and shares, and allow them to post sponsored content – have been linked to its rise…
At a depth between 3.7 and 6.8 miles, the world’s hadal zones—named after Hades, the Greek god of the underworld—are the deepest parts of the oceans. Marine biologists have now uncovered a predator adapted to thrive in these pitch-black, crushingly high-pressure depths.
Researchers from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and Instituto Milenio de Oceanografía (IMO) in Chile have identified one of the first large, active predatory amphipods ever documented in the world’s hadal zones. Their findings, detailed in a November 27 study published in the journal Systematics and Biodiversity, reveal a never-before-seen species from an iconic yet mysterious region once thought uninhabitable.
While the word “predatory” likely evokes images of large, fearsome creatures, the Dulcibella camanchaca is a shrimp-like crustacean less than 1.58 inches (4 centimeters) long that belongs to the same classification as beach sandhoppers, according to the study. It does, however, have specialized raptorial appendages it uses to capture prey—primarily smaller amphipods in the Atacama Trench. Also known as the Peru–Chile Trench, it runs along the coast of the two countries and is over 4.97 miles (8 kilometers) deep in certain areas…
A fan of one of the greatest science fiction franchises of all time has been getting hit with traffic tickets that are meant for other people. A “Star Trek” fan’s love of the USS Enterprise has seen her receiving thousands of dollars worth of tickets even though she hasn’t driven her car in years and doesn’t even own the associated license plate anymore.
CBS New York reports on the strange situation involving 76-year old Beda Koorey. Koorey is an avid Star Trek fan — I get it, I’m a Trekkie as well — so much so that she got the Starship Enterprise’s registry number of NCC-1701 as her license plate. This was a big deal back when she still drove, but that’s not the case anymore as Korrey surrendered her plates and stopped driving back in 2020. “I don’t have a car. I don’t drive. Those plates were turned in,” she told CBS. Yet every time she goes to her mailbox she has a ticket inside. It’s all because Trekkies from all over the country have the same license plate, but not even real plates — they’re using novelty ones…
Google on Monday announced Willow, its latest, greatest quantum computing chip. The speed and reliability performance claims Google’s made about this chip were newsworthy in themselves, but what really caught the tech industry’s attention was an even wilder claim tucked into the blog post about the chip.
Google Quantum AI founder Hartmut Neven wrote in his blog post that this chip was so mind-boggling fast that it must have borrowed computational power from other universes.
Ergo the chip’s performance indicates that parallel universes exist and “we live in a multiverse.”
Here’s the passage: …
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Re: birgerjohansson @375:
Strange subtext for that title. Like, Sharia’s not for rounding up tourists. Adhering to the ‘proper’ sect doesn’t spare citizens from the life-worsening fallout of theocracy. That’s something the Taliban has long been famous for making obvious.
Ah. That’s a propaganda channel. Description: “This is a Christian debate clips channel dedicated to dispelling the lies of islam and the pagan false prophet muhammad”
The clip, however, is from The Breadwinner (2017), an Irish animated film produced by Angelina Jolie. It’s about an 11-year-old—in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan at the start of the War on Terror—who dresses as a boy to evade gender-restrictions that prevented her from working to provide for her family, in the wake of her father’s unjust arrest (incited in the clip). Wikipedia says it got excellent reviews, including from Afghan women activists.
Bits and pieces of news, as summarized by Steve Benen:
* Another controversial ruling from a Trump-appointed judge: “A federal judge in North Dakota blocked a Biden administration rule that allowed DACA recipients to sign up for health insurance through the Affordable Care Act. In a ruling Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Dan Traynor sided with a group of 19 Republican state attorneys general who filed a lawsuit in August to prevent the rule from taking effect, saying it violates a law that prohibits giving public benefits to people without legal immigration status.” [Summarized from NBC News]
* Another closely watched case: “New York Attorney General Letitia James has rejected Donald Trump’s request to walk away from her office’s $486 million civil fraud judgment against the president-elect.” [Summarized from NBC News]
* “The Biden administration said Tuesday it will recognize and support a new Syrian government that renounces terrorism, destroys chemical weapons stocks and protects the rights of minorities and women. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement that the U.S. would work with groups in Syria and regional partners to ensure that the transition from President Bashar Assad’s deposed government runs smoothly.” [Summarized from Associated Press]
* Gut-wrenching bloodshed in Haiti: “More than 180 people were killed in a massacre over the weekend in one of the poorest neighborhoods of Haiti’s capital, the United Nations’ human rights chief said on Monday. A leading Haitian human rights group described the killings as the personal vendetta of a gang boss who had been told that witchcraft caused his son’s fatal illness.” [Summarized from New York Times]
* From the Hill: “The House task force that investigated the assassination attempts against Donald Trump published its final report on Tuesday, making dozens of recommendations including that the Secret Service should record all radio transmissions and scale back protection of foreign leaders to focus on protecting the president and other top U.S. officials.”
* Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s latest findings: “Seeking to investigate leaks of classified information, the Trump Justice Department in 2017 and 2018 secretly obtained phone and text message logs of 43 congressional staffers and two members of Congress in a far broader probe than previously known, according to a new report by the department’s internal watchdog.” [Summarized from NBC News]
* Blocking a big merger: “A U.S. District Judge in Oregon has blocked a $25 billion-bid by supermarket giant Kroger to take over rival Albertsons after ruling that the Federal Trade Commission’s concerns about the merger’s impact on market consolidation were valid. Judge Adrienne Nelson said Tuesday afternoon that a merger between the two companies would end up harming consumers.” [Summarized from NBC News]
* The latest in a series of concerns related to the senator’s health: “Outgoing Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, 82, is recovering from minor injuries after falling following Senate Republicans’ weekly lunch on Tuesday, his office said. … On his way to the Senate floor later Tuesday, McConnell told reporters he is ‘feeling good.’ He had a bandage under his left eye, and a bandage on his left wrist.” [Summarized from NBC News]
Wisconsin prosecutors filed 10 additional felony charges Tuesday against two attorneys and an aide to President-elect Donald Trump who advised Trump in 2020 as part of a plan to submit paperwork falsely claiming that the Republican had won the battleground state that year.
Jim Troupis, who was Trump’s attorney in Wisconsin, Kenneth Chesebro, an attorney who advised the campaign, and Mike Roman, Trump’s director of Election Day operations in 2020, all initially faced a single felony forgery charge in Wisconsin. Those charges were filed in June.
But on Tuesday, two days before the three are scheduled for their initial court appearances, the Wisconsin Department of Justice filed 10 additional felony charges against each of them. The charges are for using forgery in an attempt to defraud each of the 10 Republican electors who cast their ballots for Trump that year.
Each of the 11 of the felony charges they face carries the same maximum penalty of six years in prison and a $10,000 fine…
Bekenstein Boundsays
Google Search completely kills the cache feature (2024-09)
Google said it would do this after removing the cache link from the search result snippets back in January of this year but has not done until nine-months later.
What?? They can’t do that! That breaks basic functionality of browsers and of the web!
How do I force them to put it back the way it was?
KGsays
Birgerjohansson@372,
Maltese is not Arabic, although it is “a Semitic language derived from late medieval Sicilian Arabic with Romance superstrata”. It’s not mutually intelligible with Arabic, and more of its vocabulary is derived from Italian and Sicilian than from Arabic, while some is also taken from English (it was ruled by the UK between 1800 and 1964, and I’ve read somewhere the possibility of it becoming part of the UK was discussed).
The insurgent group that overthrew Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria claims to have wrested control of the eastern city of Deir el-Zour after intense battles with the Kurdish-led, US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), AP reported. A member of the Islamic group Hayat al-Tahrir Sham (HTS) said in a recorded video that the group would sweep neighbourhoods to secure the city. The nearby city of Boukamal had also fallen to HTS, the person said, adding that Raqqa and Hasakah were subsequent targets.
South Korean police tried to search President Yoon Suk Yeol’s office on Wednesday but have not been able to enter the main building, Yonhap news reported as an investigation into the U.S. ally’s decision to declare martial law widened.
The attempt to search the presidential office significantly escalates the investigation against Yoon and top police and military officers over the Dec. 3 martial law declaration that plunged the country with Asia’s fourth-largest economy into a constitutional crisis.
Yoon is now the subject of a criminal investigation into insurrection allegations and is banned from leaving the country, but he has not been arrested or questioned by authorities.
A presidential security service official said earlier on Wednesday that the police raid of Yoon’s office was under way, confirming media reports at the time. Yonhap later said investigators at the presidential compound had not yet entered the main building.
Yonhap said police had not managed to agree with the Secret Service on the method of the seizure and search. Police declined to comment…
Hundreds of deadly virus samples are missing from a laboratory in Australia, the Queensland government announced on Monday.
The government has instructed Queensland Health — Australia’s public health department — to launch an investigation into what’s being described as a “major historical breach of biosecurity protocols,” according to the online media statement.
It was reported that 323 vials of multiple infectious viruses — including Hendra virus, Lyssavirus and Hantavirus — went missing from Queensland’s Public Health Virology Laboratory in August 2023…
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s foreign intelligence chief said on Tuesday that Russia was close to achieving its goals in Ukraine with Moscow holding what he said was the strategic initiative in all areas in the war.
Naryshkin added that for Russia, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy had lost legitimacy and “the ability to negotiate”.
It’s easy to see where this is going. Russia declares victory and stops advancing without giving up any territory. They either don’t negotiate, stall negotiations indefinitely or use Trump to leverage Ukraine into an abusive settlement. Most likely stalling because they don’t want Ukraine to join NATO or sign any defense treaties while Ukraine probably won’t agree to anything bad as long as they have EU support. This leaves open the door for Russia to restart the offense later once they rebuilt the military.
Donald Trump has had plenty of time to come up with an explanation for why he wants to fire FBI Director Christopher Wray, whom he appointed to the job under scandalous circumstances seven years ago. So far, the president-elect hasn’t come up with much.
He nevertheless want wants a manifestly unqualified Republican operative named Kash Patel to become the next director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation — and by all appearances, GOP senators appear prepared to go along with the idea, ignoring Democrats’ concerns about, among other things, Patel’s literal enemies list.
But it’d be a mistake to assume that the argument about Patel’s future falls neatly along partisan and ideological lines. It does not. In fact, some former Trump administration officials have stepped up with unambiguous condemnations of their own.
The Wall Street Journal, for example, published an op-ed this week from John Bolton, who served as Donald Trump’s White House national security adviser, under a headline that read, “Kash Patel Doesn’t Belong at the FBI.”
Bolton, who worked directly with Patel during his tenure, argued that the prospective FBI leader placed “obedience to Mr. Trump above other, higher considerations — most important, loyalty to the Constitution.”
To resolve questions over his integrity and fitness, a full-field FBI investigation, as prior nominees have undergone, is warranted. With more facts available and less rhetoric, the result will be clear. I regret I didn’t fully discern Mr. Patel’s threat immediately. But we are now all fairly warned. Senators won’t escape history’s judgment if they vote to confirm him.
If Bolton were alone, his concerns might be easier to put aside, but he’s not.
Charles Kupperman, Patel’s supervisor in the first Trump administration, also told The Wall Street Journal, in reference to the prospective FBI chief, “He’s absolutely unqualified for this job. He’s untrustworthy. … It’s an absolute disgrace to American citizens to even consider an individual of this nature.”
Former Attorney General William Barr, meanwhile, wrote in his memoir that Trump had considered making Patel the deputy director of the FBI in his first term, though Barr said he told the White House that would happen “over my dead body.”
In his book, Barr added that Patel “had virtually no experience that would qualify him to serve at the highest level of the world’s preeminent law enforcement agency. The very idea of moving Patel into a role like this showed a shocking detachment from reality.”
Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper has also raised public concerns about the likelihood of Patel politicizing federal law enforcement.
As Bolton’s op-ed added, Olivia Troye, who served as counterterrorism adviser to Vice President Mike Pence, accused Patel of “making things up on operations.”
To be sure, Patel has pushed back against his critics, and his lawyer sent a threatening letter to Troye about her accusations.
The bottom line, however, remains the same: There are some prominent voices from the Trump administration, including some who worked with Patel directly, raising some serious red flags about his upcoming nomination to lead the FBI — which seems like the sort of thing that senators should take seriously.
Among the institutional pillars of democracy – a free press, an independent judiciary, robust civic and religious organizations – a nonpartisan professionalized military may be the one we take most for granted and overlook.
Set aside for the moment your concerns about American imperialism, the military-industrial complex, and the deep streak of jingoism that has long infected domestic politics and foreign policy. All legitimate concerns in their own right, but they can mask the U.S. military’s mostly sterling record at staying out of the partisan political fray. That includes developing and sustaining an highly educated officer corps that provides continuity and professional judgment regardless of which party is in the White House.
Like he has with other democratic underpinnings that represent a threat to his power, Trump is promising to remake the military into a compliant, servile, compromised husk of its former self. Trump has surrounded himself with some of the loudest, most extreme right-wing advocates for bringing the military to submission.
Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee for Pentagon secretary, emerges from this right-wing subculture. It’s fortuitous that Hegseth is a dim bulb with a sordid personal and professional life that may ultimately scuttle his own nomination. But Hegseth is not alone, and the vision for the military that he represents is shared in Trump’s circle and by Trump himself, who had praised Hitler’s generals because he perceives them (wrongly) to have put personal loyalty to the leader above all else.
Trump’s undermining of the military fits neatly into our matrix of Trump II threats – retribution, corruption, and destruction. Among those, it’s destruction first and foremost, which almost inevitably leads to opportunities for corruption. The retribution element is more nuanced than, say, Trump’s jihad against the Justice Department. But having surrounded himself in his first term by “my generals” – nearly all of whom ended up betraying him in his own mind – Trump’s urge to bring the military to heel isn’t that hard to figure.
All of this comes to mind today because of an important new piece by Don Moynihan, professor of public policy at the University of Michigan, about Trump’s planned military purge. Here’s an excerpt:
In the short run, we should be very worried about what Trump will do with a military repurposed to serve him, and not the constitution. In the long run, the politicization of the American military will undermine its capacity. What happens if every new President distrusts the generals in place because they were selected via a politicized process? They then choose their own, adding to the instability in leadership. Under such circumstances, expect a Putinification of the military, where officers are afraid to tell the President the truth.
When an appellate court on Tuesday got its hearing of the major emergency room abortion case the Supreme Court sent back down last term, the liberals painted a grim picture of women’s suffering under an anti-abortion regime that the conservatives quickly sought to sanitize.
“Your argument is: If the mother wants to kill the baby even though it’s not necessary to prevent [her death] — then they have to be airlifted,” Judge Lawrence VanDyke, a Trump appointee and former solicitor general of Nevada and Montana, asked the lawyer for an Idaho hospital system after she explained that patients had been airlifted out of the state because they might need what Idaho classifies as a criminal abortion.
The case, now before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, centers on whether federal emergency room mandates — enshrined in EMTALA, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act — preempt state abortion bans when they conflict. EMTALA requires that emergency rooms stabilize patients in crisis. Idaho maintains that they don’t overlap, that the ban’s exception for preventing the woman’s death covers all emergencies. The Biden administration and the hospital system counter that pregnant women can experience a range of medical emergencies that put them on the path to permanent injury or illness, if not death.
Judge Milan Smith, a George W. Bush appointee, underscored the extremity of what the Idaho abortion ban demands.
“A woman comes into the emergency ward and in the physician’s good faith opinion, the woman, unless she has an abortion, is going to lose a leg,” he said.
“So here you have a physician who is gonna lose his or her license if they treat the person, and the woman might lose her leg otherwise?” he asked incredulously. “You don’t think that’s in conflict with the purposes of EMTALA and a natural reading of it?”
Smith, along with the liberals on the court, pushed back on the anti-abortion fantasy that state laws can ban virtually all abortions without having a devastating effect on women’s health. (Idaho’s legislature allowed the committee tasked with tracking and investigating pregnancy-related deaths to shutter in 2023, a year after its ban took effect.)
Judge Salvador Mendoza brought up Sandpoint Idaho, where the OB-GYN ward shut down after Idaho’s trigger ban took effect.
“There are no services available for women who have a situation where they’re bleeding out,” he said.
“What if it’s not catastrophic but it’s resulting in serious injury to the woman — what do we do in that circumstance?” he asked the lawyer for Idaho’s legislators. “Does she have to then rely on a hopefully working vehicle to drive across the border to Spokane, Washington to get services there?”
VanDyke and the other Trump appointees painted the case as federal government overreach by the Biden administration, which is seeking to enforce the commonly held interpretation of EMTALA. “How is this not regulation of the practice of medicine?” Judge Daniel Bress asked. VanDyke mused about whether “ethics” have a place in medicine, and why it shouldn’t be left to the states to decide what they are.
Judge Consuelo Callahan, a George W. Bush appointee, cut through the attempts to accurately depict an anti-abortion regime to ask: “Is this an exercise in futility?”
She pointed out that a new administration is coming in, and asked whether the judges should just send the case back down to the district court.
The Supreme Court’s delay — incurred by preemptively taking the case from the 9th Circuit, getting fully briefed and hearing arguments, then deciding that it intervened too early and sending it right back — has made it near-certain that the case will still be percolating when Joe Biden’s Department of Justice becomes Donald Trump’s. It’s very unlikely that Trump’s DOJ will share the Biden one’s interest in preserving abortion rights in emergency rooms, likely ending the case at least in its current posture.
The Supreme Court majority Trump crafted ended abortion rights across the United States. Now, indirectly, it’ll likely have ended that care for women in red state emergency rooms too.
A Republican judge in North Carolina who lost a race for a seat on the state Supreme Court is seeking to overturn his defeat by throwing out 60,000 ballots cast in the election—mostly from Black and Democratic voters, according to a report published Tuesday in the Charlotte Observer.
The judge, Jefferson Griffin, lost to incumbent Justice Allison Riggs by 734 votes in November. A recount affirmed Riggs’ victory.
But Griffin filed a protest with the State Board of Elections seeking to toss 60,000 ballots cast in the race, claiming those votes came from voters who did not list Social Security or driver’s license numbers on their voter registration forms.
The North Carolina Republican Party and the Republican National Committee made the same claim in the fall to try to purge 225,000 voters from the rolls in the state. But both the State Board of Elections and a federal judge ruled against the GOP in that case.
The North Carolina Democratic Party held a news conference Tuesday morning in which they called on Griffin to drop his challenge and concede.
Riggs wrote a brief to the State Board of Elections slamming Griffin’s effort to toss out tens of thousands of ballots in an effort to steal an election he lost:
Having failed to win over the voters, Judge Griffin now pleads his case here. He asks the Board to change the voting rules, decide that tens of thousands of voters failed to satisfy those changed rules, and then throw out their votes for failure to anticipate the new rules. While that request is legally and constitutionally improper, it is wrong on an even more basic level—one familiar in every North Carolina schoolyard. Whether playing a board game, competing in a sport, or running for office, the runner-up cannot snatch victory from the jaws of defeat by asking for a redo under a different set of rules. Yet that is what Judge Griffin is trying to do here.
The sitting justice also sat for an interview with Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias where she criticized Griffin’s push, saying that Griffin was even challenging the validity of Riggs’ own parents’ votes. [video at the link] [Marc Elias always has an excellent handle on the issues.]
“My dad is a 30-year military veteran who registered to vote in person using his military ID,” Riggs said. “It’s not that it’s my parents, it’s that I obviously have their stories to explain how problematic this is. We should not be weaponizing the systems … to avoid conceding in an election you lose.” […]
As headlines began circulating that seemingly confirm Don Jr. ‘s tryst with Florida socialite Bettina Anderson, his father swooped in to ship Don’s most-likely ex-fiancee Kimberly Guilfoyle overseas.
“Today, I am very pleased to announce the appointment of Kimberly Guilfoyle as the United States Ambassador to Greece,” the felon-elect wrote via Truth Social on Tuesday.
Citing that Guilfoyle has been a “close friend and ally” of his, Trump added that Guilfoyle’s “extensive experience and leadership in law, media, and politics” makes her “supremely qualified” for the job.
[…] Don Jr. was spotted holding hands with Anderson on Monday. Rumors of their alleged cheating initially surfaced in August, but this is the first time their romance was caught on camera.
Now that the cat’s out of the bag, Don Jr.’s dad is here to clean up the mess and send Guilfoyle away under the guise of an important nomination—or, at least, that’s how it looks.
Guilfoyle graciously accepted the consolation prize, posting via X a photo of herself with her engagement ring still on.
“As ambassador, I look forward to delivering on the Trump agenda, supporting our Greek allies, and ushering in a new era of peace and prosperity,” she wrote.
As for Don Jr., he has seemingly traded in his MAGA-power couple status to shack up with the daughter of an affluent family who commingles with Palm Beach’s treasure trove of billionaires. Anderson’s social media is flooded with selfies and group photos alongside politicians, business owners, and wives of the wealthy. […]
Yesterday, I wrote,
Our organization condemns violence. However, emotionally, knowing first hand, how murderous insurance companies are, I felt no sorrow over the death of the uhc ceo.
More importantly, the mainslime media has devoted hundreds of hours of insipid reporting on the Luigi Mangione uhc ceo story.
However, if it weren’t a rich, powerful insurance company ceo and was just some ‘average’ person that was shot and died, we probably wouldn’t even hear about it!
I hope many here will read this before the infinite thread rolls over again.
David Rothkopf/Need to Know [from Rothkopf’s substack]
“Why Syria Matters to You”
The Ramifications of the Stunning Changes in Syria are Enormous and Global
Here’s what we do know, though. The defeat of Assad is a defeat for his sponsors and protectors. Most importantly, that means Iran. The Iranians must be reeling having suffered a massive defeat of the network of proxies and allies that they have been carefully cultivating for years. Hamas, Hezbollah and now the Assad government were the three strongest components of that network and Iran’s ability to project its influence throughout the region is greatly diminished. How they react will be a key element to look for in the months ahead. Will they grow more aggressively defensive (pushing ahead with their nuclear weapons program) or will the changes produce internal change within Iran? Whatever happens, for now, Iran’s power is nothing like it was or at least appeared to be just a few months ago.
Russia too has suffered a setback. They were protectors and enablers of Assad. But clearly, they were unable to protect him (or even help him prepare for the revolution that unseated him.) Russia’s reputation as a global power has suffered another setback. They invaded a much weaker neighbor, Ukraine, and have effectively been held to a draw—but a very very costly draw that has obliterated the capacity of their army.
On MSNBC, Richard Engel pointed out that, right up until he was forced out of Syria, Assad was still building new palaces and renovating older ones. Assad was caught by surprise.
Michael A Cohen/Truth and Consequences:
“Let Freedom Ring”
The fall of Assad in Syria is a great moment in human history. But what does it mean for Syria and the region?
I spoke to an old friend, Anand Gopal, about this. He has traveled in Syria and is writing a book about the civil war — and he has a much more optimistic view than most about HTS’s potential.
“They’ve thought about the politics of this in ways that are impressive,” he said. Indeed, after HTS’s takeover of Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city, in late November, the group immediately moved to establish security, protect civilians and provide basic services to the city’s residents. According to Middle East analyst Aaron Zelin, this is consistent with HTS’s rule in the parts of Syria they controlled before the events of the last few weeks. These governing efforts and outreach to civilians contrasts with the Islamic State, which seemed more interested in ideological purity than institution building.
Perhaps the most striking thing about HTS, under Jolani’s leadership, is the group’s outreach to the international community. “They are very serious about wanting rapprochement with the West and refashioning themselves as a national movement, not a transnational jihadist movement,” Gopal said.
With the assortment of rebel groups in Syria and the meddling of external actors, there is certainly potential for more conflict. But HTS is saying and doing all the right things for now — and the international community should respond positively.
Marwan Kabalon/Al Jazeera:
Analysis: Al-Assad’s fall is Iran and Russia’s loss, but are there winners?
Turkiye stands to gain, while Israel feels insecure about what comes next.
The rapid collapse of the Syrian army stunned Russia and Iran and they could not do much to help the crumbling al-Assad regime. During a meeting within the Astana format in Doha on December 7, Iranian and Russian representatives seemed resigned to accepting that the battle for Syria had been lost to Turkiye.
With the fall of the al-Assad regime, Iran has lost a key pillar of its “Shia Crescent”. The land corridor it used to arm Hezbollah and project its influence in Lebanon and throughout the Levant has been cut. Iran’s role in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is likely to be diminished, as it has lost key bargaining chips. It will now be forced to retreat and look inward or it may opt for accelerating its effort to build a nuclear weapon to compensate for its dwindling regional power.
Russia too has been weakened by the fall of al-Assad, as it considered the battle for Syria part of its conflict with “Western imperialism”. Losing its only Arab ally has dented its reputation as a global power – one that can have a say in regional affairs in the Middle East.
Although Moscow is likely to retain for now its air force base in Hmeimim and its naval base in Tartous, its continuing presence in Syria is untenable.
A group of nearly 30 House Republicans on Tuesday urged Donald Trump to get rid of the IRS’ free program to file federal taxes—a move that would make it more expensive for millions of Americans to file their taxes.
Direct File is a product of the Inflation Reduction Act, which provided money for the IRS to create a free alternative to TurboTax and other for-profit tax-preparation companies. [Thank you Joe Biden.]
The program especially benefits low-income Americans who cannot afford tax preparers. And it poses a threat to tax-preparation companies, who stand to lose revenue if the IRS has its own program for Americans to use to prepare and file their annual returns.
In the letter, Republicans tried to make Direct File sound bad but actually made the program look pretty appealing.
“As you know, during the last tax year, the IRS rolled out its Direct File pilot program in 12 states, through which taxpayers file their taxes directly to the IRS instead of through a trusted accountant or reputable third-party preparation service,” the GOP lawmakers wrote in a letter to Trump, telling him he should get rid of Direct File on “day one” of his presidency.
[…] It’s unclear why the Republican lawmakers think people should trust a third-party over the IRS to properly file their taxes. But campaign contributions from the tax-preparation companies—which have worked to block programs like Direct File for years—shed some light.
Many of the Republicans urging Trump to get rid of Direct File have received campaign contributions from Intuit, the company that owns TurboTax. Intuit earned $14.4 billion in revenue in fiscal year 2023. [list at the link]
The GOP lawmakers who oppose Direct File instead support “Free File.” According to a 2019 ProPublica exposé on TurboTax, Free File was an agreement TurboTax and other tax-preparation companies made with the federal government in which the companies agreed to provide a free service for some low-income Americans in exchange for the federal government agreeing not to create their own tax-preparation software.
From ProPublica’s report:
Since Free File’s launch, Intuit has done everything it could to limit the program’s reach while making sure the government stuck to its end of the deal. As ProPublica has reported, Intuit added code to the Free File landing page of TurboTax that hid it from search engines like Google, making it harder for would-be users to find.
[Sneaky]
While Republicans are railing against the Direct File program, studies show it is popular with Americans.
In 2024, the new Direct File service was in a pilot phase, processing more than 140,000 tax returns. But 90% of people who used it rated the software as excellent or above average, with respondents saying they liked that the software was easy to use, trustworthy, and free.
[…] “Overall, those using Direct File in the pilot states report very high satisfaction with the service and very high likelihood to recommend it to others,” the survey found. “Compared to those using alternatives, Direct Filers are much more likely to say tax filing this year was more straightforward than last year and that their costs and time spent filing were reduced.”
In 2025, Direct File will be expanded to 24 states for people who do not itemize their taxes and do not collect gig-economy, rental, or business income.
But its fate from there is unclear. In January, Republicans will have a trifecta in Washington and have been working to kill the program since its inception. In fact, Trump’s pick to be the new IRS commissioner wants to get rid of the IRS altogether.
Ultimately, killing Direct File is just another way Republicans are sticking up for big business over average Americans […]
[…] Raw Story has a piece up today about the dynamite IG report on the DOJ’s unprecedented spying on members of Congress during Trump’s first administration to try and identify the source of the leaking of highly sensitive materials to the press:
‘Outrageous’: GOP lawmaker turns on Trump’s DOJ after revelation it spied on Congress
Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, lashed out at President-elect Donald Trump’s former Department of Justice for obtaining records of lawmakers, staffers and journalists during an investigation of leaks.
In a report released Tuesday, the Justice Department’s inspector general said the DOJ targeted two lawmakers and 43 staffers in an effort to unearth leaks to journalists. Records of Trump’s pick to be the next FBI director, Kash Patel, were obtained as a part of the investigation. Patel was serving as a House staffer at the time.
How ironic is this — Trump’s nominee to head the FBI was one of the subjects of this prior spying!
“This report lays out outrageous behavior by the Department of Justice, where members of Congress and staff of the Intelligence Committee, the committee that I chair, had phone records and email records that were accessed by the Department of Justice without court review,” Turner told CNN on Tuesday.
Turner argued that new protections put in place by Attorney General Merrick Garland were “clearly insufficient.”
That goes without saying of course, though in any event Trump’s new AG (whoever that may be) will almost certainly remove those protections.
“We need to pass statutes that can require a court review and authorization,” he insisted. “The courts didn’t even know that the Department of Justice was accessing emails and phone records of members of Congress and their staff, merely because they had access to classified information.”
It’s nice to see at least one Republican Congressman can still get outraged over some of the Trump toadies’ more questionable actions. And the best part of the IG report is that despite all the time and questionable effort spent by Trump’s DOJ to identify the source of the leaks, they never were able to do that.
“The Arkansas Republican’s explanation for rejecting the PRESS Act was so absurd, it seems implausible that the senator actually believed it.”
When the closely divided U.S. House takes up important legislation, unanimous votes are practically impossible. If a bill carries real consequences, someone in the chamber is bound to have a problem with it for one reason or another.
But in January, when House GOP leaders agreed to bring the Protect Reporters from Exploitative State Spying Act — or PRESS Act — to the floor, it passed without objection. Any one member from the left, right or center could’ve balked, but no one did.
That’s probably because the legislation appeared to be one of the year’s least controversial bills. The basic idea behind the effort was straightforward: Early on in Attorney General Merrick Garland’s tenure, he created a policy that prohibited federal prosecutors from going after reporters’ private information or forcing them to testify about their confidential sources.
The PRESS Act would simply codify the existing policy into federal law, creating a permanent shield law for media professionals.
The legislation was written by a Democrat and a Republican, and it enjoyed equal numbers of Democratic and Republican co-sponsors in the House. […]
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) blocked a federal shield law that would protect journalists from revealing their sources and material to the government. In the Senate on Tuesday, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked for unanimous consent for the Senate to pass the Protect Reporters from Exploitative State Spying Act, known as the PRESS Act, and Cotton objected.
By way of an explanation, the Arkansas Republican told his colleagues on the Senate floor, “The liberal media doesn’t deserve more protections.” [WTF!? The also protects conservative media.]
The argument was so absurd that it seems implausible that Cotton actually believed it.
When I talked to my MSNBC colleague Lisa Rubin about the measure, she commented, “The irony of Sen. Cotton’s response yesterday is that the most prominent recent examples of alleged investigative or prosecutorial overreach against the media involve journalists who are not known to be liberals.”
Indeed, whether Cotton appreciates this or not, the PRESS Act is not merely a progressive endeavor. Tucker Carlson, for example, has been as eager to tout the bill as anyone on the left.
What’s more, in the Senate, the bill has three co-sponsors — two of whom are Republican Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.
While we’re at it, let’s not forget that this is an idea with a lengthy Republican pedigree: As far back as 2005, then-Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana — more than a decade before he became vice president — championed similar legislation after reporter Judith Miller was jailed as part of the investigation into who revealed Valerie Plame’s identity.
But if Cotton’s official explanation is simply too foolish to take seriously, why did the Arkansan derail the PRESS Act? It might very well be because Donald Trump told him to.
In fact, it was just a couple of weeks ago when [Trump] issued an online edict that said GOP senators “MUST KILL” the legislation.
As we discussed soon after, it wasn’t altogether clear why. One possible explanation was that Trump did a detailed and thoughtful analysis of the bill and had concerns about how the policy would be implemented. The far more likely explanation was that Trump saw a headline about protections for journalists, remembered that he hates the free press, and responded reflexively without doing any research or even taking the time to understand the bill at its most basic level.
Either way, the incoming president called for the demise of the bipartisan measure — and Cotton played his part, support for the bill from the right notwithstanding.
It’s still possible that the Senate will be able to reconsider the legislation before the lame-duck session ends, but given the limited number of days remaining, and the outgoing Senate Democratic majority’s to-do list, Cotton (and Trump) will likely succeed in killing one of the year’s most bipartisan bills.
“Elon Musk thinks Donald Trump’s idea about waiving environmental safeguards for billion-dollar investors is “awesome.” That’s ridiculous.”
Donald Trump [posted]: “Any person or company investing ONE BILLION DOLLARS, OR MORE, in the United States of America, will receive fully expedited approvals and permits,” Trump wrote in a message published to his social media platform. He added in the same missive that this would include waiving “all Environmental approvals” for such investors.
He concluded, “GET READY TO ROCK!!!”
In other words, as Trump sees it, there are international entities that might be inclined to invest in new business opportunities in the United States, but they might not want to bother with inconvenient public safeguards such as the Clean Air Act or the Clean Water Act. As far as the incoming American president is concerned, he can set their minds at ease, declaring in writing that these foreign investors will be able to do as they please, just so long as they commit the capital.
[…] Conspiratorial billionaire Elon Musk, who’s helping lead Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), described the president-elect’s message as “awesome.”
To be sure, an administrative policy along these lines might very well be “awesome” for wealthy interests like Musk, who might find regulations such as pollution controls inconvenient to their bottom lines, but whether regular people — the folks who would have to deal with the consequences of ignored public safeguards — find this “awesome” is another matter entirely.
It also calls to mind reporting from the spring when Trump huddled at Mar-a-Lago with some of the country’s top oil executives, who complained about “burdensome” environmental safeguards. […] the then-Republican candidate said the executives should raise $1 billion to return him to the White House.
If so, the article added, Trump promised his guests that he would “immediately reverse dozens of President Biden’s environmental rules and policies and stop new ones from being enacted.”
But just as important is the fact that presidents can’t simply snap their fingers and unilaterally scrap public safeguards for billion-dollar investors. As The Washington Post’s Philip Bump explained in his latest analysis:
Such an awesome idea that one might ask why it had never been done before. And the answer (as is often the case when Musk embraces some insight into how government works) is that it’s more complicated than it looks. There are a lot of laws in place that a president cannot simply sidestep and some very good reasons those laws are there. For example: given their druthers, some business leaders would ignore environmental rules entirely if it made them money. Good for the businesses, but not necessarily great for the citizens whom the government is meant to serve.
If Trump believes his country’s environmental laws are flawed and are standing in the way of necessary business development, he and his team can roll up their sleeves, do some unglamourous policy work, take their case to the public and their representatives, and try to have those laws changed.
But he doesn’t want to. As Bump’s analysis added, the president-elect does not appear to believe that he should be encumbered by such a process. […]
When we talk about Trump’s authoritarian vision, we’re not just talking about his hostility toward elections, voting and resolving differences at the ballot box (as important as those attitudes are). Just as notable is [Trump’s] vision that policymaking power must be consolidated in the Oval Office and should be shaped entirely by his uninformed whims and preferences.
That’s not how the slow and often difficult process of policymaking is designed to work in the United States. By all appearances, the president-elect, who’s never shown the slightest interest in how to govern responsibly, simply doesn’t care.
The Onion’s acquisition of InfoWars isn’t happening — at least for now. In a ruling on Tuesday, a Texas bankruptcy judge rejected The Onion’s purchase of the conspiracy-ridden website founded by Alex Jones, according to a report from The New York Times.
Last month, The Onion announced that it had purchased InfoWars during a bankruptcy auction of Jones’ assets. It had the support of the families of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims, who successfully sued Jones for more than $1 billion for spreading false claims. However, Judge Christopher Lopez halted the sale shortly after the auction.
As reported by The Times, Lopez disagreed with the sealed bidding process used to sell Jones’ assets, saying that the auction didn’t “maximize” the amount of money Jones’ creditors could’ve gotten from the sale of InfoWars. “It seemed doomed almost from the moment they decided to go to a sealed bid,” Judge Lopez said when handing down his decision, according to The Times. “Nobody knows what anybody else is bidding.” …
“A provision tucked into the National Defense Authorization Act forces parents in the military to weigh their careers against providing health care for loved ones.”
[…] The language slipped into the National Defense Authorization Act, which the House is voting on later this week, is buried on page 399 of the 1,813-page bill. Republicans added it at the last minute, after Democrats had worked with them to help craft the legislation.
It’s just one sentence: “Medical interventions for the treatment of gender dysphoria that could result in sterilization may not be provided to a child under the age of 18.”
The GOP has been relentlessly campaigning on restricting trans rights — Republican candidates spent a whopping $215 million on ads vilifying transgender people in this election cycle — and they’ve now found a way to tie trans issues to legislation that authorizes federal spending for the military.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said Tuesday that he’s “proud” of the NDAA bill and specifically pointed to its provision that blocks TRICARE, the military’s health care program, from covering the costs of gender-affirming health care for servicemembers’ kids.
“We banned TRICARE from prescribing treatments that would ultimately sterilize our kids,” he told reporters at a press conference.
Johnson’s claim and the bill’s language are misleading. Young children who receive gender-affirming care are not being sterilized. The procedures that Republicans have often pointed to when talking about trans health care — surgeries performed on a patient’s genitals — are, as a rule, only done on consenting adults and are only done after consultations with medical professionals.
The kind of gender-affirming care trans kids who haven’t hit puberty yet typically get is mental health support and guidance for social transitioning. Once a kid hits adolescence, they may begin to take puberty blockers, medicine that delays the changes of puberty. This doesn’t cause permanent physical changes; when someone stops taking puberty blockers, their natural puberty resumes.
Older trans children and teens may add in sex hormones like estrogen or testosterone. There are possible long-term effects on fertility if they remain on these hormones long-term, depending on when they began hormone replacement therapy. The patient, the patient’s family and their doctors ultimately decide whether to proceed with, pause or forgo any of these interventions; many trans people opt not to pursue hormones or surgery. […]
Nearly 300 pro-LGBTQ rights organizations wrote to House lawmakers on Monday, urging them to oppose the NDAA over its anti-trans language.
“Preventing thousands of family members from obtaining medically necessary care is a betrayal of the promise to our military families and an unnecessary threat to our national security,” reads the letter from the groups, including Human Rights Campaign, Lambda Legal and Physicians for Reproductive Health. “This care for the treatment of gender dysphoria, often referred to as gender-affirming care, isn’t ‘special’ or ‘experimental’ health care — it is ordinary health care supported by medical science and managed by physicians.” [Letter available at the link.]
[…] “For a party whose members constantly decry ‘big government,’ nothing is more hypocritical than hijacking the NDAA to override servicemembers’ decisions, in consultation with medical professionals and their children, about what medical care is best for their transgender kids,” Pocan [Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus] said in a statement.
[…] “The inclusion of this harmful provision puts the lives of children at risk and may force thousands of service members to make the choice of continuing their military service or leaving to ensure their child can get the health care they need,” Smith [Washington Rep. Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee who helped craft the bill before the GOP slipped in the anti-trans rider] said in a statement. “For that reason, I will oppose final passage of the FY25 NDAA in its current form.”
[…] The House is likely to vote on the NDAA bill on Wednesday or Thursday.
Newsmax, the conservative news channel, has reportedly ordered staffers to refrain from criticizing Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee to be secretary of defense.
The directive comes after Newsmax host Greg Kelly argued on-air a week ago that disclosures about Hegseth had doomed his nomination.
Discussing a letter in which Hegseth’s mother said her son had abused women, Kelly said, “this secretary of defense thing is not going to happen.” Kelly also chided Hegseth for reportedly not informing Trump ahead of time about allegations of assault and public drunkenness.
Mediaite now reports that multiple sources inside Newsmax told them that network CEO, Trump ally, and longtime conservative activist Chris Ruddy was contacted by Trump’s team and told that Trump was unhappy with the commentary.
According to Mediaite, Newsmax Chief Operating Officer Elliot Jacobson held a meeting with staff on Friday and told them that network reporting on Hegseth had to “focus on the positive.” The staff was reportedly told that they should “pivot” if the allegations against Hegseth come up on air and that failure to follow the network’s directive could lead to “termination.”
The Newsmax kerfuffle comes as a recently released opinion poll from Civiqs for Daily Kos (taken Dec. 7-10) found that 48% of registered voters oppose Hegseth’s nomination and only 42% support him. Hegseth is polling behind other Trump nominees like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, despite their significant baggage. The revelations about Hegseth’s past, in connection with the major position he has been nominated for, appear to be having a real effect.
Trump needs his nominee to have support from right-wing media, and pressuring Newsmax could ensure that occurs.
[…] Trump relies on conservative media like Newsmax and Fox News to set his policy agenda and to provide individuals that he selects to operate in his administration. These outlets are also key to promoting Trump and his message and pushing back on Newsmax before he is even inaugurated would certainly set the tone for the next few years of coverage.
“Maxine Waters Assaults Nancy Mace, Except Not Maxine Waters And Not Assault”
“Mace had a pro-trans foster-care-youth activist arrested for shaking her hand.”
Last night the Rayburn House Office Building hosted an event celebrating the 25th anniversary of a good law: the Foster Care Independence Act of 1999, which focused on helping young adults who age out of foster care and would otherwise be entirely without support at age 18. As one of six co-chairs of the 43-member Congressional Foster Care Caucus, Rep. Nancy Mace was not exactly a required speaker, but she was certainly welcomed by the activists throwing the party and looking for any and every excuse to talk to members of Congress about helping kids and young adults.
That welcome ended badly when James McIntyre, an advocate for foster youth and respected government consultant on foster care policy, shook Mace’s hand after her remarks and asked her to support trans youth. If you know Nancy Mace, who thinks about trans penises more than Mark Robinson does, you know that didn’t go over well. She left the room and called the Capitol Police to report an assault — and a short time later, McIntyre was arrested outside the building, last seen calling for any random nearby lawyer to help out.
Witnesses’ descriptions of what happened were positively bland. From The Imprint:
Elliott Hinkle, a former foster youth and advocate for LGBTQ rights, said McIntyre shook her hand, and made a comment about how many transgender youth are in foster care, adding: “They need your support.”
Which sounds just like what you would expect from McIntyre, who lived in the Illinois foster system from age 3 to 18 and has spoken extensively about his experience growing up gay and being tortured for it. Now an award-winning advocate and “leading policymaker” on foster care issues, he’s put his heart and his work into helping the kids he sees as most vulnerable as well as singlehandedly restoring Yr Wonkette’s faith in humanity this morning.
Meanwhile, Mace wasn’t interested in helping anyone but herself. While McIntyre was being arrested for a handshake, Mace was publicly begging for sympathy as a tragically injured, but heroically resolved, bulwark against trans violence: [Xitter post available at the link]
Full Text:
I was physically accosted at the Capitol tonight by a pro-tr*ns man. One new brace for my wrist and some ice for my arm and it’ll heal just fine.
The Capitol Police arrested the guy.
Your tr*ns violence and threats on my life will only make me double down. FAFO.
Note for the record that she uses an asterisk in the word “trans” as if it’s something horrible to say, but she felt perfectly happy to speak the slur tr***y just last week in a video that she distributed. At the same time, she’s pushing a narrative that trans people and pro-trans advocates are violent. This isn’t accidental; this is part of her strategy to justify the anti-trans legislation she’s promoting. The more she is able to convince people that trans folks are a threat, the easier it is to arrest trans people for non-violent, entirely normal actions (like peeing in an actual toilet with the door closed). Public accusations are political strategy here.
Many media outlets, credulously and uselessly, are furthering Mace’s bigoted aims by reporting the story only from Mace’s perspective. The Washington Post is a perfectly good example of the trend. But The Imprint (AKA imprintnews.org), which specializes in child welfare, youth justice, and youth homelessness, had been inside the room to cover the anniversary celebration and has three witnesses saying that nothing criminal or violent or even unusual happened:
“From what I saw, it was a normal handshake and interaction that I would expect any legislator to expect from anyone as a constituent,” said Hinkle, a consultant who has advised the federal government on issues affecting youth in foster care.
Later, Hinkle said, one of Mace’s aides returned to the reception and asked McIntyre his name and whether he would repeat what he had told the legislator. Two other people who witnessed the interaction confirmed that description of the brief episode.
[…] Now if you’ve gotten this far and thought, “Whoa! But Wonkette! You’re implying that it might just be possible that Mace filed a false police report. She would NEVER be so feloniously crazy, right? Right?”
Well, firstly we’re only implying that’s a possibility […]
But secondly, Yr Wonkette is old enough to remember when Mace took to twitter to get sympathy for being the victim of horrible Antifa vandalism: [Xitter post available at the link]
She apparently filed a police report in that case (or she implied on twitter that she did) but refused to release her doorbell camera footage or footage from any of her other security cameras to help find the Antifa miscreant who, Crooks & Liars brought to our attention, happened to have handwriting very similar to the Zodiac Killer Unabomber Antifa, no wait, none of those. The handwriting seemed to inexpert eye to match that of … Nancy Mace. [Xitter post available at the link]
Who could have foreseen that?
Now, we are not saying that Nancy Mace has committed the crime of filing a false police report for the second time as we have not seen the police reports from 2021 (if any) or from last night. But if you believe that she did file reports, and if you believe three eyewitnesses as reported by The Imprint, and if you weren’t exactly impressed by her character after the “Antifa vandalism” incident, then it sure begins to smell a lot like Mace’s dumpster full of garbage is approaching 1000°
Software vulnerability submissions generated by AI models have ushered in a “new era of slop security reports for open source” – and the devs maintaining these projects wish bug hunters would rely less on results produced by machine learning assistants.
People are using AI tools to scan the code and then reporting the output without really checking it first. Some of these are good faith attempts to check the code that are not paying enough attention and some are attempts to pump up resumes by getting to list finding significant Linux bugs.
If your using an AI bug finder to analyze the code, check the output and if you can’t demonstrate or explain how it’s a problem then don’t report it. LLMs can hallucinate issues out of nothing and it just fills up the maintainers time with non-issues.
[…] Two sources familiar with the investigation said the notebook found on Mangione contained writings, including: “What do you do? You wack the CEO at the annual parasitic bean-counter convention. It’s targeted, precise, and doesn’t risk innocents.”
[…] Frank Figliuzzi, former FBI assistant director for counterintelligence and NBC News national security analyst, said it’s increasingly looking like suspect Luigi Mangione is “a cause killer.”
Mangione was found with handwritten notes in which he said “these parasites had it coming” and expressed criticism of the U.S. health care industry and large corporations. Yesterday, as he arrived at court, he shouted toward reporters: “It’s completely out of touch and an insult to the intelligence of the American people and their lived experience!”
“He’s driven by ideology and not necessarily a direct, personal beef with his targeted victim,” Figliuzzi said today on MSNBC’s “Ana Cabrera Reports.” He suggested that may make it harder for detectives investigating Mangione’s motive, noting it’s possible he wasn’t even insured by UnitedHealthcare.
“Don’t expect a direct line. We haven’t found that yet. Moreover, he simply did research, it’s quite possible he found that United was the most egregious offender in his mind. […]
I appreciate @412 Lynna providing a clearer picture. But, things are not as clear as the mainslime news often presents it:
NBC news reported, “He’s driven by ideology and not necessarily a direct, personal beef with his targeted victim,” Figliuzzi said today on MSNBC’s “Ana Cabrera Reports.”
However, that is merely ‘mind reader’ conjecture by Figliuzzi, I have read additional articles that may point to a ‘direct, personal beef’. They showed an X-ray supposed to be of Mangione’s back held together with metal screws and that he was often had horrible back pain. So, it would be important to know if he had medical treatment denied by an insurance company. However, that is still not justification for killing.
There are other obvious problems with ‘popular opinions’ about killing. Many magats have expressed they want Mangione dead. He allegedly killed the murderous uhc ceo. But, a subway vigilante who held a disruptive homeless man in a choke hold until he was dead was acquitted by a jury and the magats rejoice. The vigilante was trained to use as that hold as a lethal weapon. I think we need to see things with greater perspective and seek more equitable justice in this society.
“[Trump] having discussions with foreign leaders makes sense. Elon Musk joining those conversations does not.”
The fact that Donald Trump had yet another meeting with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán this week was not at all surprising. [Trump] has spent an outrageous amount of time publicly celebrating the foreign leader, having private conversations with the Hungarian, and even welcoming Orbán to Mar-a-Lago. The more the prime minister’s authoritarian takeover of his country generated international outrage, the more Trump extended over-the-top support to the prime minister.
But part of what made the latest meeting notable was one of the discussion’s unelected participants. The Washington Post reported:
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban met with President-elect Donald Trump, billionaire Elon Musk and Trump’s pick for national security adviser, Michael Waltz, at Mar-a-Lago on Monday, the European leader announced on social media platform X.
There was no obvious reason for the conspiratorial billionaire to join that conversation […]
– When Trump spoke to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in November, Musk joined the phone call.
– When Trump traveled to Paris for the reopening of Notre Dame Cathedral and spoke to French President Emmanuel Macron, Musk was there.
– When Trump spoke to Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Musk was there, too.
Over the weekend, former White House national security adviser John Bolton, who served at Trump’s side in 2018 and 2019, said during a CNN interview, “You know, it’s almost like Musk has become vice president.”
Pointing to the event in France, Bolton added, “I don’t know where JD Vance is on this trip, but Elon Musk, to this point, remains a private citizen and he has no governmental authority. … Let’s keep that in mind.”
What’s more, it’s worth emphasizing that after the president-elect’s inauguration, Musk still won’t have any statutory governmental authority: The billionaire will have a leadership role on an advisory panel called the Department of Governmental Efficiency, or DOGE, but that will empower him to do little more than issue strongly worded memos.
That said, Musk continues to have financial interests around the globe, which helps explain his international interactions with foreign leaders. Why Trump is helping facilitate those discussions is something he has not yet explained.
“Trump had repeatedly indicated he would fire him if he didn’t step down.”
FBI Director Christopher Wray told employees at an internal town hall on Wednesday that he is resigning, according to sources familiar with the meeting.
He said he is stepping down at the end of the current Biden administration.
“After weeks of careful thought, I’ve decided the right thing for the Bureau is for me to serve until the end of the current administration in January and then step down. My goal is to keep the focus on our mission — the indispensable work you’re doing on behalf of the American people every day. In my view, this is the best way to avoid dragging the Bureau deeper into the fray, while reinforcing the values and principles that are so important to how we do our work,” he said in his remarks.
“It should go without saying, but I’ll say it anyway — this is not easy for me. I love this place, I love our mission, and I love our people — but my focus is, and always has been, on us and doing what’s right for the FBI,” he said.
“When you look at where the threats are headed, it’s clear that the importance of our work – keeping Americans safe and upholding the Constitution — will not change. And what absolutely cannot, must not change is our commitment to doing the right thing, the right way, every time. Our adherence to our core values, our dedication to independence and objectivity, and our defense of the rule of law — those fundamental aspects of who we are must never change,” he said.
“That’s the real strength of the FBI – the importance of our mission, the quality of our people, and their dedication to service over self. It’s an unshakeable foundation that’s stood the test of time, and cannot be easily moved. And it — you, the men and women of the FBI — are why the bureau will endure and remain successful long into the future,” Wray continued.
[…] Trump has picked Kash Patel to replace Wray at the FBI, pending Senate confirmation.
Trump reacted to the news shortly after in a statement railing against Wray and praising Patel, who was on Capitol Hill Wednesday to shore up support among Republican senators.
“The resignation of Christopher Wray is a great day for America as it will end the Weaponization of what has become known as the United States Department of Injustice,” Trump wrote on his social media platform. “I just don’t know what happened to him. We will now restore the Rule of Law for all Americans.”
[…] “Under the leadership of Christopher Wray, the FBI illegally raided my home [false], without cause [false], worked diligently on illegally impeaching and indicting me [false], and has done everything else to interfere with the success and future of America,” Trump wrote. “They have used their vast powers to threaten and destroy many innocent Americans, some of which will never be able to recover from what has been done to them.”
Patel told ABC News Senior White House Correspondent Mary Bruce just after Wray’s announcement he’ll be ready on “Day 1.”
“We look forward to a very smooth transition and I’ll be ready to go on day one,” he said.
[…] Wray, who was appointed by then-President Trump to a 10-year term and confirmed in August 2017, oversaw the agency in a “heightened threat environment” and number of high-profile cases, including the investigation of the man who appointed him.
Congress changed the FBI director’s tenure to 10 years to years to address concerns about political interference.
As FBI director, Wray oversaw the investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob, hundreds of Chinese espionage cases, the probes into Trump’s and President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents as well as thousands more criminal investigations.
Wray was nominated by Trump after Trump fired his predecessor, James Comey. […]
A Russian official being interrogated during a bribery investigation falls (accidentally, of course) from an 11th-floor window. [video and still images at the link]
The limp dead body of former deputy mayor of Krasnoyarsk, Alexey Davydov was dropped head first from the 11th floor window of the Investigative Committee building.
Canada has allocated nearly $587 million in military aid to Ukraine.
Canadian Defense Minister Bill Blair clarified that the funds will be used for ammunition, training Ukrainian soldiers, and other necessary means to ensure Ukraine’s victory.
“The board’s ruling means Democrat Allison Riggs maintains her narrow advantage over Republican Jefferson Griffin, who may appeal the decision, in the battleground state contest.”
The North Carolina State Board of Elections voted Wednesday to reject a Republican challenge to throw out 60,000 ballots in a state Supreme Court race that the Democratic incumbent leads by just over 700 votes.
The board, where Democrats have a 3-2 edge, could now move to certify the victory by Democrat Allison Riggs, eliminating a major hurdle for the party in the contested race.
Riggs, who was appointed to the state Supreme Court in 2023, emerged from Election Day with a narrow lead over Republican Jefferson Griffin, a state appeals court judge, triggering two recounts.
A full machine recount showed Riggs leading Griffin by 734 votes. A second, partial hand recount of the race increased Riggs’ lead marginally, but that total is not considered official by North Carolina’s elections board. More than 5.5 million ballots were cast in the race.
Following Election Day, Griffin’s team filed hundreds of legal challenges across all of North Carolina’s 100 counties, alleging that nearly 60,000 people voted illegally. Many of the allegations centered around people who Griffin’s lawyers claimed didn’t have a driver’s license number or Social Security number on file in their voter registration records.
“These voters were not eligible to cast a ballot without first lawfully registering,” attorneys for Griffin’s campaign wrote in the first brief to North Carolina’s election board.
[…] voter registration applications approved by legislators 20 years ago were intended to require people to note their driver’s license or Social Security numbers. The form, however, didn’t include that requirement, and in subsequent years, tens of thousands of voters didn’t include them on it. In addition, some voters likely registered before the 2004 law was passed.
The other two categories of votes Republicans contested related to overseas voters.
The NCSBE held consecutive votes on all three categories Wednesday. The first vote, on the matter regarding driver’s license and Social Security numbers, and the second vote on a matter related to overseas voters who haven’t lived in North Carolina, came along party lines. A third vote on an issue related specifically to overseas voters who failed to provide photo identification with their ballots, was rejected unanimously.
Griffin is likely to appeal the decision, which would insert the case in the state court system. If that occurs, the case could eventually make its way to the state Supreme Court.
The North Carolina Democratic Party filed a suit in federal court on Friday seeking to ensure all ballots in the race were counted. The suit, which effectively sought to preempt a potential elections board ruling against Riggs, pointed out that the federal law does not allow states to toss out ballots because voter registration papers are missing a driver’s license number or a Social Security number.
[…] Wednesday’s hearing came as another pivotal issue was being considered by the Republican-controlled Legislature.
Democrats currently control the North Carolina board of elections. Under current law, the governor gets to appoint all five members: Three from the governor’s party and two from the opposition party.
But Republican lawmakers have been working to pass a bill that, among other things, strips the governor of that power. State Republicans are expected to vote on overriding a veto from Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper on that bill later Wednesday.
“The long-standing policy has prevented ICE agents from arresting immigrants at so-called ‘sensitive locations’ except under certain circumstances.”
The incoming Trump administration intends to rescind a long-standing policy that has prevented Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from arresting undocumented people at or near so-called sensitive locations, including houses of worship, schools and hospitals or events such as funerals, weddings and public demonstrations without approval from supervisors, according to three sources familiar with the plan.
[…] Trump plans to rescind the policy as soon as the first day he is in office, according to the sources — who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss the change publicly.
The move would be intended to boost ICE’s authority to arrest migrants across the country, and its speed in doing so, as part of Trump’s plan to carry out what he has said he wants to be the “largest deportation operation in American history.”
The policy preventing agents from making arrests in sensitive locations without approval started in 2011 with a memo sent by then-ICE Director John Morton, and continued through the first Trump and Biden administrations. It was meant to allow undocumented people to operate freely in certain public areas with the idea that doing so will ultimately benefit not just them, but also the larger community.
“Immigration enforcement has always required a balance. In the past, Presidents of both parties have recognized that merely because it may be lawful to make arrests at hospitals and schools doesn’t mean it’s humane or wise public policy,” said Lee Gelernt, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union.
“We don’t want people with contagious diseases too scared to go to the hospital or children going uneducated because of poorly considered deportation policies.”
[…] Under the policy, ICE agents have been allowed to go into the sensitive locations to make arrests under certain conditions including a national security or terror issue, the arrest of a felon considered dangerous, or if there was imminent risk of death or physical harm to a person or property or concern that evidence in a criminal investigation would be destroyed.
Even when those circumstances existed, agents had to get approval from superiors in order to plan an arrest in a sensitive location. […]
The idea that Trump might allow ICE agents to make arrests anywhere, even inside schools and houses of worship, without the current limitations began circulating in Project 2025, a list of policy proposals distributed by the Heritage Foundation prior to the election.
[…] In 2019, there were a least 46 people staying in churches across 15 states, according to Church World Service, a faith-based organization that tracked the number of sanctuary seekers in America.
An international research team has for the first time imaged and controlled a type of magnetic flow called altermagnetism, which physicists say could be used to develop faster and more reliable electronic devices. Financial Times:
A groundbreaking experiment at a powerful X-ray microscope in Sweden provides direct proof of the existence of altermagnetism, according to a paper published in Nature on Wednesday. Altermagnetic materials can sustain magnetic activity without themselves being magnetic.
The team from the UK’s Nottingham university that led the research said the discovery has revolutionary potential for the electronics industry. “Altermagnets have the potential to lead to a thousand-fold increase in the speed of microelectronic components and digital memory, while being more robust and energy-efficient,” said senior author Peter Wadley, Royal Society research fellow at Nottingham.
Hard disks and other components underpinning the modern computers industry process data in ferromagnetic materials, whose intrinsic magnetism limits their speed and packing density. Using altermagnetic materials will allow current to flow in non-magnetic products.
The Franklin Fire in Malibu, California has burned 3,900 acres (1,578 hectares) and is threatening a residential area. More than 1,500 firefighters have been battling the flames as the blaze forces thousands to evacuate.
No deaths or injuries have been reported but one resident described it as “the closest, most dangerous, craziest fire” they’ve seen.
As of noon local time on Wednesday, the fire was only 7% contained, according to officials…
The Amazing Kreskin, a mentalist and entertainer who captivated generations of TV audiences, has died at age 89.
Kreskin’s friend and former road manager, Ryan Galway, told news outlets that Kreskin — born George Joseph Kresge Jr. — died Tuesday at his home in Caldwell, N.J…
Galway said Kreskin was known for his “extraordinary mind-reading abilities and captivating performances,” and his “uncanny” ability to predict complex events, including multiple Super Bowl outcomes and presidential election results…
Egypt’s great pyramid have more sides than previously thought – it’s not four
Intel Announces Retirement of CEO Pat Gelsinger
For the convenience of readers, here are a few links back to the previous set of 500 comments on The Infinite Thread:
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2024/10/04/infinite-thread-xxxiii/comment-page-5/#comment-2244547
Zelensky wants to ‘work directly’ with Trump on ending Ukraine’s war with Russia
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2024/10/04/infinite-thread-xxxiii/comment-page-5/#comment-2244040
Trump Guitars hit with cease and desist from Gibson over use of Les Paul body shape
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2024/10/04/infinite-thread-xxxiii/comment-page-5/#comment-2244568
@289, 308 (Relevant to Gibson guitars, not T****)
More than 3,000 fake Gibson guitars seized at Los Angeles port
Trump tries to pry power away from Congress
Pete Hegseth, Trump’s choice to lead the DOD, faces brutal new allegations
“A new report characterizes Pete Hegseth as a predatory racist with a substance abuse problem who badly mismanaged the only two organizations he ever led.”
Employee lawsuit accuses Apple of spying on its workers
The problem with Trump’s reaction to the Hunter Biden pardon
“There’s a legitimate controversy surrounding Joe Biden’s pardon for Hunter Biden, but given his scandalous record, Donald Trump ought to sit this one out.”
The Pardon, by Josh Marshall
Archaeologists Discover Enormous Iron Age ‘Weapon Sacrifice’ Near Danish Motorway
Link
Additional news is presented as part of Talking Points “Morning Memo” at that link.
@6, 7 Lynna OM
One framing I haven’t seen yet:
When did Biden promise not to pardon his son? Was it back when he was still a candidate? If it was a campaign promise, then it could be considered no longer binding when Biden dropped out of the presidential race.
But honestly, I just don’t give a fuck, mostly due to the double standards issue.
Trump’s handing out sweet gigs to his family members again
Link
Followup to comment 9.
See also comment 465 in the previous set of 500 comments on The Infinite Thread.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/all-the-right-idiots-very-upset-joe
“All The Right Idiots VERY Upset Joe Biden Pardoned Hunter”
“It’s a bad day for the norms, and a good day for people who aren’t morons.”
Followup to comments 9 and 12.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/kash-patel-for-fbi-trumps-most-dangerously
On Trump nominating Kushner pere to be ambassador to France… Seems to me that the French might have a say in who they’ll accept as ambassador from the US, so it’s not just the Senate that has to fall in line.
Scott Manly:
“China Launches New Falcon 9 Clone While SpaceX Flies Next Starship – Deep space update December 1st”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=tGdQoSyYzQQ
Lots of items, including cool suborbital stuff
“Economists [Including Paul Krugman] Predict “Easily Bamboozled” Trump Will Get Railroaded In His Own Trade War”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=mjUESUKjwkQ
A honest tory politician!
“Rory Stewart Brilliantly Explains Why Young People Are Not Working!”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=ErPIO3B2p0I
5-plus feet of snow and counting: More snow is coming to the already buried Great Lakes
Black-footed ferrets reintroduced to Arizona for first time in nearly 30 years
UK Imposes New Pet Travel Rules That Every Tourist With Dogs, Cats, And Ferrets Must Know
U.S. Postal Service won’t accept Canada-bound mail for now due to strike
North Carolina Senate Republicans Override Dem Gov’s Veto Of Their Power Grab
All kinds of potential bad news here. There are a lot of close calls when it comes to legislation at the state level. Voting all the way down the ballot is important.
Are Trump voters morally responsible for the harms that will follow from his policies?
Trump propagandist finally admits election conspiracy movie is a fraud
Car goes airborne, lands on top of Boise-area house.
Santa Claus could not be reached for comment.
This week, God Awful Movies has guests Reno and Cecilia from “The Comic Dissection” podcast . BTW Reno and Cecilia dissects comics from an intersectional leftist perspective (give them a try, they are on all social media).
This episode of GAM should be generally available in another day.
‘Bibleman’ of this short film is a Xian ‘superhero’ that kills people if they are …too depressed?! The logic is weird.
Also, lightsabres are a copyright violation!
Minnesota Republicans sue to force election rerun in tight House race where 20 ballots are missing
“The Most Bizarre 80s Sci-Fi Films You’ve Never Heard Of”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=8gaNHWKeBI8
“Brother From Another Planet” at least seems watchable. As for the first Polish film… I suppose if you are the only two men left alive in a world populated by women, even Beavis and Butt-Head might get to score.
https://youtu.be/q3BCymx7enk
I guess this shows a photon. Reconstructed from wakes in data. Anton Petrov
Elon Musk loses bid to reinstate massive Tesla pay plan, now worth $101B
Actually, I have heard of, and seen three of them!
It is. I watched it. Long ago, so I don’t remember a lot of detail, but my impression is favorable. It’s definitely woke. The IMDb rating of 6.7/10 is quite good.
I also watched Hardware Wars. It is funny, made on a budget of $8000, and is only 13 minutes long. IMDb 6.9/10.
Those two are available on tubitv.com (free with ads).
I also saw Liquid Sky when it first came out. I do not have a wish to see it again.
Excerpts from Pete Hegseth’s Secret History, by Jane Mayer.
New Yorker link
During an interview on The Rachel Maddow Show, Jane Mayer said that her phone is ringing off the hook since this report on Pete Hegseth went public. People are calling Mayer to corroborate the stories about Hegseth.
Rachel Maddow presented an excellent and thorough segment discussing the fact that President Biden pardoned his son, Hunter. YouTube link. The YouTube video is a truncated version that does not show some history that Maddow presented.
(Knowledge Fight Animated)
Formulaic Animations 1: How dumb people [Alex Jones] hide money
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=DR5fb-onlG0
The foreseeable ones, yes. Which means everything easily inferred from his pre-election-day rhetoric, his past actions, and the many warnings given by many experts about the threats he pose. If he harms trans people, tanks the economy, costs Ukraine its freedom, appoints another rapist to the Supreme Court, lavishes more tax cuts on the rich, botches the response to another pandemic, puts more kids in more cages, blows up NATO and unleashes Putin on an unsuspecting EU, ends democracy, or tweets nonsense like “covfefe” again, in particular, then every single person who voted for him this November shares culpability in the crime.
The actor Timothy West passed away November 12th.
He was married to Prunella Scales (Fawlty Towers) who turned 92 years today.
It is a quite sad occasion since Prunella Scales is in poor health.
Jon Stewart:
“Trump Nominates Kash Patel for Head of FBI & Hunter Biden’s Last Minute Pardon.”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=V5BcIHPMAHw
Winter ruminations from the town where CRISPR was co-discovered.
…At 10.50 the sun finally rose above the roof of the rather low three-storey buildings 300 m away, shining a light that somehow seems anemic. December in North Sweden is not like Minnesota.
I feel like the robot in Hitch-Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy.
Silver lining; As long as the Gulf Stream is doing its job, we get warmer winters than the northern US states.
Stephen Colbert:
“Pres. Biden Should Pardon Everybody | Trump Picks Kash Patel To Run FBI / Hegseth’s Drunk History.”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=zd3pNQ5V3vo
Data brokers may be banned from selling your social security number
It seems more likely to me that the CFPB will cease to exist than accomplish new consumer protection regulation.
Scientists Uncover ‘Game-Changing’ Therapy for Asthma Attacks
@ ^ Reginald Selkirk : And we’ve only just found that out NOW?!
South Korean president declares emergency martial law, accusing opposition of anti-state activities
Jimmy Kimmel Concedes Biden Promised Not to Pardon Hunter, but ‘There’s a Very Good Chance He Doesn’t Remember’
Huh. Well that wasn’t where I was expecting it. Something about a multi-sided pyramid.. As seen from the air which, apparently, is new?
“Finding out” takes a while. First you may have promising lab results. Then you have to figure out how to turn your new knowledge into an actual medicine. Then you have Phase I clinical trials. This was a Phase II clinical trial. If successful. there is also a Phase III.
^ For working out how a pyramid looks? From the air?
Phase III is a type of ice right? ;-)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phases_of_ice
@ the pyramid thing:
Egypt has many pyramids. I have seen some commentary that the 8-sided thing is not the Great Pyramid of Giza, but I haven’t tracked down definitive information.
Several Trump personnel picks have backgrounds in snake-oil sales
Followup to Reginald @43.
South Korea Prez Declares ‘Martial Law’, by Josh Marshall
Unions score major win in Wisconsin with court ruling restoring collective bargaining rights
“Union leaders were overjoyed with the ruling, which affects tens of thousands of public employees.”
More details at the link, including money-based claims by Republicans, pointing out that schools and local governments used the law to raise money through higher employee contributions for benefits.
Cartoon: Tom the Dancing Bug cries into its oat milk latte while MAGA wins!
They have closets ready.
https://www.joemygod.com/2024/12/extremist-mi-rep-make-gay-marriage-illegal-again/
“Extremist MI Rep: “Make Gay Marriage Illegal Again””
Link
At one point, the New York Times displayed on it’s front page four articles about the Hunter Biden pardon. Reminds one of the coverage of Hillary Clinton’s emails.
Two internet cables connecting Sweden and Finland suffered damage — one caused by construction, the other still under investigation
CNN: South Korea live updates
Under South Korean law the president is obligated to end martial law when parliament voted to block it. The president has not done that but the military has withdrawn from the parliament building. This is bad for the president, who will probably lose in the long run if he can’t shut down parliament.
First SMS text message is sent
A peek inside the restoration of the iconic Notre Dame cathedral
As Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell complains about people playing “political games” with judicial nominations, irony weeps in the corner.
Followup to JM @57.
Link
Oh FFS.
Link
Cartoon: Pardons galore
Followup to comment 33.
Fox News is pretending allegations against Hegseth aren’t a thing
GOP congressman runs to Newsmax with threats after Hunter Biden pardon
US says Chinese hackers are still lurking in American phone networks
New York Times:
New York Times:
House Republican Wants Party To Boldly Own Plans To Gut The Social Safety Net
Link
Link
Link
https://www.wonkette.com/p/idahos-ridiculous-abortion-trafficking
“Idaho’s Ridiculous ‘Abortion Trafficking’ Law Is Back And Microscopically Less Terrible Than Before!”
“‘Abortion trafficking’ is not a thing.”
https://www.wonkette.com/p/trump-just-got-18-million-from-a
“Trump Just Got $18 Million From A Chinese Crypto Scammer”
“Let the new age of grifting begin!”
Chad Chronister, Donald Trump’s pick to run the DEA, withdraws name from consideration
Trump team agrees with Justice Dept to begin background checks
Lynna@71: I thought land mines were banned worldwide?
Musk Signals Fresh Push To End US Daylight Saving Time
Democrats flip final House seat of the 2024 elections, narrowing Republicans’ majority
“Boxing Day”
.https://www.facebook.com/share/p/17wEu3A3TY/
Lynna, OM @ 67
.
Americans have the memory of goldfish.
In the 1980s Reagan’s USA supported the Unita guerrilla as “freedom fighters” as they deliberately planted landmines everywhere, targeting civilians to Ruin food production. Unita also press-ganged the local populations as work forces to support the Unita guerrilla.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union the bosses of Unita and the Angolan government cut a deal to share power, and the profits of oil. The formel leader of unita eventually fell out with the others and tried to re-start the civil war but without foreign support he was crushed.
It seems he was just another war lord without popular support. Once he had served his purpose he stopped being a “freedom fighter” in US media. The hundreds of thousands dead, or mutilated by land mines are forgotten.
But I remember.
.
Joe Biden would have been in congress back in the day, backing the foreign policy status quo (when he wasn’t confirming right wing supreme court justicea). May he and his cronies burn in hell.
Re. @ 80
Goddammit, I forgot to celebrate Kissmas Nov 29th, the death of Henry Kissinger.
Musk and Trump to fall out in 2025, predicts analyst
That’s no great feat. Trump throws everyone under the bus – eventually.
Some lighter stuff.
Meanwhile… Finland Loves Meanwhile | Potato Cartel | Chicken-Flavored Wrapping Paper
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=3oY6iU6fHZg
The Swedish princess Birgitta (who would have been a monarch if the rules in 1972 had not been sexist) has died. She was 87.
Unlike Elizabeth II she did not lord it over concentration camps in Kenya and Malaya. And to my knowledge none of her children is an ephebephile.
This non-malign low-key life is one of the reasons why the Scandinavian royal families retain their popularity despite the obsolete institution (but the Norwegian one got a baddie recently).
Satanic Temple launching program at Marysville elementary school, countering Christian programming
Bekenstein Bound@76,
The Ottawa Treaty aims to ban landmines worldwide, but only states which have signed and ratified it are bound by it, as with any international treaty. Neither the USA nor Russia has done so, although Ukraine apparently has. But personally I’d cut them some slack on this: they are laying mines on their own territory to impede invaders, and have every incentive to keep careful records of where they have placed them. I believe the mines concerned have a limited activation span, although such things are never perfectly effective.
birger @80, and Bekenstein Bound @76:
[text from Daily Kos]
New York Times:
Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor:
War is ugly and awful at every level.
LB’s ‘Golden At-Bat’ rule: What we know about the potential change
Live coverage of an important Supreme Court case. Check back at the link for updates.
Supreme Court Hears Major Trans Rights Case
Jenson Huang is an optimist
“Moore’s Law is So Back.”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=qaGup_agmuo
Cartoon: Experts explain why America voted for plague
Malcolm Nance:
https://malcolmnance.substack.com/p/five-steps-to-resist-the-coming-tyranny
Much more at the link.
Link to selected excerpts.
UnitedHealthcare CEO shot in premeditated attack
Followup to comment 89.
Crip Dyke’s timestamped live coverage follows the introduction above. See the link for the details. It’s good, and worth reading.
Excerpt:
Link for comment 94: https://www.wonkette.com/p/liveblog-trans-lawyer-chase-strangio
And another excerpt:
https://www.wonkette.com/p/florida-state-senate-lady-wants-to
“Florida State Senate Lady Wants To Ban Government From Controlling The Weather”
“Warning, this story will lower your IQ.”
A New Phone Scanner That Detects Spyware Has Already Found 7 Pegasus Infections
https://www.wonkette.com/p/south-korean-president-very-sorry
“South Korean President Very Sorry He Tried To Do That Coup That You Do”
“Oh did he try to arrest the opposition leaders? His bad.”
In Congress, the Republicans’ ‘fealty caucus’ is already too big
“As Donald Trump tries to wrest control away from the legislative branch as part of an ugly power-grab, too many in Congress are happy to go along.”
Re: Lynna, OM @ #99….
I really wish these people would stop referring abject obedience to “fealty”. Properly, fealty goes both ways. The vassal has obligations to the feudal lord, but there are also reciprocal obligations from the feudal lord (such as coming to the defense of a vassal). These people are probably also unaware that fealty is not transitive. As it was put in the Middle Ages… The vassal of my vassal is not MY vassal.
Link
https://www.wonkette.com/p/damn-this-iowa-slaughterhouse-just
https://www.wonkette.com/p/dumb-turkey-rudy-giuliani-has-99
“Rudy Giuliani Has 99 Self-Made Problems, And He Is All Of Them”
French government is toppled in no-confidence vote
“Prime Minister Michel Barnier is expected to resign after the vote against him and his Cabinet, sending the country into a political crisis.”
Trump taps fresh-out-of-jail former adviser to help tank economy
Drama for DOGE bros: Ramaswamy caught on tape trashing Musk
‘We had to stop this’: Woman who grabbed South Korean soldier’s gun speaks to BBC
RECALL ALERT: Mustard greens grown in Georgia recalled after Listeria contamination
Major Cucumber Recall Expands To 35 States Over Salmonella Concerns—68 Illnesses Reported So Far
@2
Trump Guitars backtracks after Gibson cease and desist and takes Les Paul-style guitars off the market
Republican Austin Theriault ends recount, conceding to Democratic US Rep. Jared Golden
These spiders listen for prey before hurling webs like slingshots
South Korean ruling party to oppose Yoon impeachment after martial law debacle
Associated Press:
Link
More at the link.
Trump gives loser former senator a cushy government gig after all
Texas May Pay The Ultimate Price For Trump’s Policies
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=kpZMGRtuY1k
Oh dear, a Republican state getting hit first? It is as if the fear of transgender people and immigrants was misguided.
Newsweek: Steelworkers Feel ‘Gut Punch’ as Trump Plans to Block Takeover
Steelworkers union that backed Trump and wanted sale to happen surprised that Trump plans to keep his campaign promise to block the sale. Something about Leopards eating people’s faces.
Not all steel workers unions are in favor of the sale but it is an amusing direct stab.
In a move drawing stark feedback from medical professionals, Anthem Insurance has decided to cap anesthesia coverage at a time limit. If an anesthesiologist submits a bill where the actual time of care is longer than Anthem’s limit, the company will deny paying for it, saddling patients with thousands of dollars in surprise additional medical debt.
--
The CEO of UnitedHealthcare insurance group (whose parent company is the world’s largest health insurer), was repeatedly shot to death in Manhattan as he walked to an investor conference.
So, the guillotining of the plutocrats has begun.
Welcome to the Roaring 20s.
Again.
Stephen Colbert:
Trump Considers DeSantis Over Hegseth | Zuckerberg Dines At Mar-A-Lago | South Korea’s Six Hour Coup.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=8DU6jp9dLLM
Licence To Shill. Jimmy Kimmel:
“Trump Hawks New Cologne, DeSantis Eyed for Defense Secretary & More Anger Over Hunter Pardon”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=7bIraottirg
Joe Biden should pardon Reality Winner for her actions as a whistleblower | Margaret Sullivan | The Guardian
.https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/dec/05/joe-biden-pardon-reality-winner-whistleblower
So NASA’s new boss to be Trump appointee is ..
Source : https://www.space.com/space-exploration/private-spaceflight/trump-picks-billionaire-private-spacex-astronaut-jared-isaacman-to-lead-nasa
Plus see his wikipage here too : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jared_Isaacman
This was the guy that did the Polaris Dawn
spacewalkEVA stunt earlier this year. Well one of the two who did that along with Sarah Gillis.I wonder what this means for the SpaceX Polaris program (https://polarisprogram.com/ ) that Isaacman has been running as well as for NASA?
Looking forward to hearing what Scott Manley thinks of this.. FWIW, As of the last I looked just now he hasn’t put out a YT clip on this yet.
See PZ’s post on that Polaris Dawn flight ^ here :
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2024/08/24/i-thought-capitalism-private-enterprise-would-make-space-travel-more-efficient/
FWIW. Infairness they tested new spacesuistand tech successfully so,
Construction will soon begin on project to keep invasive carp out of Great Lakes
Polish scientists create carp crisps
British Reaction To Why Dictators HATE Nordic countries
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=dKreLtHvgNA
As a postscript, I might mention that modern military hardware manufactured in these countries have performed very well in Ukraine against even the modern Russian hardware. :-)
ABC News: Hegseth promises to stop drinking if confirmed, GOP senators say
Well he understands basic politics. He won’t back down or admit it’s a possibility right up until he backs down.
Always nice to get a good laugh. Exactly the sort of thing an alcoholic would say and good reason to vote against his nomination.
I always find it interesting to read the comments on news stories such as the OBVIOUS assassination of the insurance CEO in Manhattan.
Nobody has any sympathy for the billionaire who became obscenely wealthy by DENYING their customers medical care and killing them after saddling them with crushing debts.
Crapitalism must die.
JM @127, if you have to promise to stop drinking if you are confirmed, well then you are already not qualified for the job.
SteveoR @122, Of course Trump chose another billionaire.
In other news: Politico reported:
Commentary:
Link
Construction of A’s Las Vegas ballpark expected to take major step after cost rises to $1.75 billion
Missouri Republican lawmakers push to reinstate abortion ban after Amendment 3 passed
Man severely injured protecting wife from early morning polar bear ambush
A major power plant fails in Cuba, plunging the island into darkness — again
U.S., Britain say they target global money laundering network used by Russians
REVEALED: THE OPERATORS BEHIND FOUR MAJOR NEO-NAZI X ACCOUNTS
The pope goes electric with first EV popemobile from Mercedes-Benz
Reginald @134, that’s good news!
In other news:
Link. The SCOTUS news above is one of several bits and pieces of news presented at the the link.
‘HISTORICALLY UNFIT’
EX-AIDES SAY GABBARD REGULARLY CONSUMED RUSSIAN STATE MEDIA: REPORT
“Ex-staffers, GOP Senate aides, and members of the intelligence community are raising concerns about Trump’s pick to lead the U.S. Intelligence Community”
That’s a Rolling Stone link. You have to sign in with an email in order to read the report.
More fuckery: Trump’s pick to lead the IRS wants to abolish the IRS—of course
MSNBC hosts’ Trump kiss-up continues to fuel anger—and meltdowns
Most of the other programs on MSNBC are not following in Scarborough’s footsteps, thank goodness.
You Have Three Days…
Video at the link.
.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/kash-patel-will-sue-olivia-troye
Kash Patel Will Sue Olivia Troye For Being Mean To Him On MSNBC
Followup to comments 93 (me) and 117 (CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain).
https://www.wonkette.com/p/our-thoughts-and-prayers-are-out
Tsunami warnings triggered in California and Oregon after 7.0 magnitude earthquake
“The National Weather Service issued the warning for Northern California and parts of Southern Oregon after the quake was detected off the coast of Ferndale, California.”
Map and more details are available at the link.
Rebel army seizes one of Syria’s biggest cities as government forces retreat
“A senior commander told NBC News that tanks had been used during the incursion and that rebels had freed hundreds of prisoners.”
More details, and photos are available at the link.
Republicans still expect people to believe that tax giveaways to the wealthy pay for themselves. Reality keeps getting in the way of the talking points.
The whereabouts and activities of Seal Team Six seem to be at the center of this. Which means that any evidence necessary to make such a case is probably classified.
Receptor structure reveals novel drug design opportunities for Parkinson’s disease
.https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-12-receptor-reveals-drug-opportunities-parkinson.html
It iscrare to find goid news about neurological disorders.
Italian police arrest nun over links to mafia
Toronto Tempo revealed as name of new WNBA team after leak accelerates unveiling
Number of Indictments and Convictions of Biden White House Appointees: Zero
The number of indictments of the second Trump administration will drop precipitously after the takeover of the Department of Justice.
In the Mojave Desert, a gold rush sparks a mini real-estate boom for old mines
US Supreme Court’s Gorsuch steps away from case after recusal request
Solar paint by Mercedes could boost electric vehicle range by 7,456 miles
That’s not how range is calculated, but OK.
Fox News loses bid for Smartmatic voting-tech company’s records about Philippines bribery case
Smartmatic won’t be required to give Fox News a trove of information about U.S. federal charges against the voting machine company’s co-founder over alleged bribery in the Philippines, a judge ruled Thursday.
Fox News and parent Fox Corp. sought the information to help fight Smartmatic’s $2.7 billion defamation suit over broadcasts about the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Smartmatic says its business was gutted when Fox aired false claims that the election-tech company helped rig the voting.
Fox says it was simply reporting on newsworthy allegations made by then-President Donald Trump and his allies.
At the same hearing, Judge David B. Cohen also turned down Smartmatic’s request to question two Fox Corp. board members. The company has already questioned others.
The Aug. 8 indictment of Smartmatic co-founder Roger Piñate and two other executives concerns a geographically distant matter: Smartmatic’s efforts to get work in the Philippines between 2015 and 2018.
But Fox maintains the criminal case is pertinent to Smartmatic’s business prospects, and therefore to the election-tech company’s claims about what it lost and stands to lose because of Fox’s 2020 coverage…
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-12-06/melbourne-synagogue-fire-adass-israel-community-suspicious/104692108
House Republicans kill effort to force the release of Gaetz’s ethics report
Re: Reginald Selkirk @ #158…
I wonder how long it will be before the report “leaks”…
New York Times:
Cartoon: Pardons for everyone
Ridiculous:
Link
Trump’s newest pick is a Fox News racist birther plagiarist
https://www.wonkette.com/p/uh-oh-lol-is-tulsi-gabbards-nomination
“Uh Oh LOL, Is Tulsi Gabbard’s Nomination In Big Trouble Too?”
“Are we gonna have to send condolences to the Kremlin?”
Elon Musk spent a quarter-billion dollars electing Trump, including financing mysterious ‘RBG PAC’
“The super PAC, which defended Trump on abortion, got its more than $20 million from the ‘Elon Musk Revocable Trust.’ ”
Followup to comments 158 and 159.
House votes against releasing Matt Gaetz ethics report for now
Democrats forced votes to compel the Ethics Committee to release its report on former Rep. Gaetz, a top Trump ally. Republicans sent the matter back to the panel.
More at the link.
Looks like Republicans really, really do not want that report to become public.
I wonder how the Russkies got to Gabbard, of all people. Does she have a taste for underage boys?
Guardian updates on political crises in France and South Korea. In both countries, an unpopular president is grappling with a national assembly where his supporters are in the minority. In both countries, the president has considerable powers (unlike, say, Germany or Ireland, where the presidency is a largely ceremonial post). In South Korea, it seems possible the assembly will vote to impeach the president (a 2/3 vote is required, which means some of the president’s own “Peoples’ Power” party would have to vote for it – the party leadership originally said it would vote against, but the leader is now saying the president must be suspended to prevent him taking further extreme actions); but as I understand it, the vote would need to be confirmed by at least six judges of the Constitutional Court, however that court is currently three members short of its bench of nine – I don’t know whether it can issue judgements. So the crisis is far from over. In France, so far there’s no expectation Macron will try anything as desperate as declaring a state of emergency/siege/exception (the differences between these are complicated), but there’s no obvious way out for him short of resignation, which he’s ruled out (but he would, wouldn’t he, until he does it). His recent prime minister, the right-wing former EU bureaucrat Michel Barnier, tried to govern by placating Le Pen’s fascists, but she helped bring him down, and any prime minister from the right would be obviously serving at her pleasure. The left alliance, the NFP, is demanding the appointment of a prime minister from their ranks, but although they are the largest block in the assembly, they are far short of a majority. With the far right already governing Italy, and a lame-duck German government facing an early election in February, which seems bound to result in advances for the fascist AfD and the “red-brown” BSW, the disintegration or at least complete paralysis of the EU looks increasingly likely.
Bekenstein Bound@167,
Gabbard’s political positions are and have been all over the place. I’d guess her fondness for Putin may be secondary to her support for the Assad regime in Syria, which in turn derives from seeing him as an ally against political Islam. I doubt she’ll last long as director of national intelligence even if approved by the Senate – she’ll fall out with Trump over somethnig or other.
Badass Russian techie outsmarts FSB, flees Putinland all while being tracked with spyware
Trump’s Fans Are Suffering From Tony Soprano Syndrome
Japanese star Miho Nakayama found dead at 54
The Romanian constitutional court has annuled the first round of the presidential election, in which a previously little-known far right pro-Putin candidate, Calin Georgescu, came first, on the grounds of Russian interference – running an online campaign for Georgescu. Presumably it will be re-run. I’m far from sure this was a wise move; people might vote for Georgescu in larger numbers to deliver a “Fuck you” to the political establishment – which is riddled with corruption.
Meanwhile Assad’s regime in Syria looks to be in serious trouble: the city of Hama has now fallen to the Islamist rebel group HTS (Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which was at one time closely associated with Al Qaeda, but has been trying to revamp its image), and is apparently advancing on Homs, while Kurdish-led forces have taken control of the eastern Syrian city of Deir el-Zor. (The Kurds have had a de facto non-aggression pact with Assad, but reportedly withdrew from a part of Aleppo they controlled in an agreement with HTS.) Assad has of course been propped up by Iran, Hezbollah and Russia, but Hezbollah has been badly damaged by Israel, Iran may not be keen to get directly involved, and Putin has redeployed most of the people and equipment he had in Syria to his invasion of Ukraine. Morale in Assad’s forces is reportedly at rock bottom due to poor pay and conditions, and corruption at the top.
What a good thing Trump is appointing an experienced expert with such balanced judgement as his Secretary of Defence!
Further on the uprising against Assad in Syria – now explicitly supported by Turkey’s President Erdoğan:
One has to wonder whether Erdoğan has received the tacit backing of Netanyahu andor Biden. He’s clearly counting on neither Iran nor Russia being in a position to intervene at a level that will save Assad’s bacon.
U.S. job market bounces back, adds 227,000 jobs in November
“The effects of two hurricanes and a Boeing strike made the job market look worse than it actually was last month. The new data is far more encouraging.”
Followup to comment 166.
Link
Appeals court upholds TikTok ban, declining to block law that would force sale
ACLU warns that Dobbs decision is now being used against trans youth
Posted by a reader of the article:
Link
Yeah, no. I don’t think that is going to work.
Military News reporting: Musk, Ramaswamy Proposal to Slash Spending Could Include VA Medical Services.
More details at the link.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/when-will-they-properly-punish-fulton
“When Will They Properly Punish Fulton County DA Fani Willis For Crime Of Prosecuting Trump?”
“They sure are trying!”
https://www.wonkette.com/p/tommy-tuberville-still-dumbass
Washington Post link
Farce.
Comerica Bank abused and neglected vulnerable customers who relied on prepaid card for federal benefits
“The CFPB is accusing Comerica of ‘deliberately disconnecting millions of calls and harvesting illegal junk fees,’ among other alleged violations.”
More details at the link.
Thousands flee as Syrian rebels close in on third major city
“If Homs were to fall, it would leave three of the country’s five largest cities in the hands of the forces led by the militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.”
More details concerning HTS history, and HTS preparations for the current offensive, are available at the link.
Commentary on the “DOGE” farce:
Link
Fox News morphs into QVC when Melania Trump has products to sell
Tawdry.
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2024/12/the-revolution-will-not-be-livestreamed
Doctors venting about the dead CEO too.
Billionaire Owner of LA Times Plans to Use an AI-Powered ‘Bias Meter’ on Editorials
That carries the hidden assumption that there are precisely two sides, and that both sides have equal standing.
Tom Jones- She’s A Lady (1974)
.https://www.facebook.com/share/v/14cFpSCA1V/
Fifty years on still going strong.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is pitch-perfect archaeological adventuring
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle would’ve been better as a movie
Every Moment You’re Playing Indiana Jones and the Great Circle Feels Like Torture
Opinions seem to vary on this.
Ancient Life Discovered in Ice-Covered Antarctic Lake
Pirates Hijack Chinese Fishing Boat Off Somali Coast
Link
Horsepower Is Dead, Australians Have Fish-Powered Boats Now
New report: Millions will lose health insurance from GOP negligence
Speaker Mike Johnson looks hyper happy lately as he talks about all of Trump’s plans. It’s like he on some kind of drug.
Cartoon: Size matters
After Promising Not to Restrict Abortion, New Hampshire GOP Intros ‘Abortion Trafficking’ Bill
Large drones are flying over New Jersey at night and no one knows why
Lynna, OM@186,
There is also a report of Druze militias fighting Assad’s forces in the southern city of Sweida. It looks like the rapid progress of the HTS offensive has encouraged other rebel groups to join in – quite possibly as much to secure their own positions vis-a-vis the HTS as to help it oust Assad. Diplomatic meetings are planned for the weekend (one between Assad’s regime and the governments of Iraq and Iran, another between Russia, Iran and Turkey), but events on the ground may outpace any efforts to shore up the regime.
Remember Edna Krabappel saying ‘no , don’t destroy the school, think of the children’ (to Bart Simpson driving a tank) with a total lack of passion.
That’s me saying “no, shooting a health insurance CEO is wrong”.
I do not condone it, but there are a lot of other people dying right now and my empathy gets thin on the ground.
.
There are a lot of Russian attempts to gain ground in Ukraine before the mud makes advances impossible. Practically all of them end in bloody fiascos as there are not enough APCs nor enough drone-jamming equipment. Putin has utter contempt for the lives of his soldiers.
After Pete Hegseth claims, Lindsey Graham says anonymous sources ‘don’t count.’ He’s wrong.
“From the Justice Department to breaking news, anonymity plays a huge role in ensuring accountability, especially as to sexual assault and misconduct.”
Syria background.
What does Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham believe in?
Once affiliated to al-Qaeda, HTS has since rejected transnational jihad but maintains an authoritarian rule rooted in Salafist principles
KG @201 Thanks for that additional information
Reginald @199, well that’s infuriating.
Bloody Sunday: ex-soldier pleads not guilty to double murder in Belfast trial | UK news | The Guardian
.https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/dec/06/bloody-sunday-ex-soldier-pleads-not-guilty-to-double-in-belfast-trial
Bloody Sunday was 1972. I remember it well.
Surprise: RFK Jr. used to sell bottled water with extra high levels of fluoride
Bluesky already delivering more referral traffic than X for some publishers
Missing grandmother’s body recovered from Pennsylvania sinkhole
Sask. man who abducted daughter to prevent her from getting COVID vaccine gets 1-year sentence, already served
Claim denial rate by different health insurance companies.
.https://www.facebook.com/share/15P6f1Gs7h/
Guess which company was run by the murdered guy.
Exclusive-Trump may cancel US Postal Service electric mail truck contract, sources say
@ Syria
Assad’s family ‘flees’ to Russia – but Kremlin ‘won’t come’ to Syrian leader’s rescue
Israel showed the ‘power’ of F-35s in destroying nearly all of Iran’s air defenses without a loss, UK admiral says
More than 100 aircraft, but fewer than 100 munitions? What?
Scientists find huge trove of rare metals needed for clean energy hidden inside toxic coal waste
@209
As for Pollard’s cat, Pepper hasn’t been found.
How An Atheist Hoaxer Got Christian Nationalists to Publish Karl Marx
The EU splintering … one more “not-the-next-hegemon”.
South Korean president says he won’t seek to impose martial law again, ‘truly sorry’ for anxiety
But he apologized! And said he wouldn’t do it again. So there’s no need to impeach him.
/s
Newsweek: Iran Evacuating Military in Syria as Rebels Advance
MNS: US jets attack Iranian militias in Syria
Assad’s allies are pulling out because his army is giving up. The soldiers are fleeing rather then fight on a large enough scale that the army has started to come apart. That being the case no small bit of help is going to do anything and neither Russia or Iran is in a position to provide large scale help.
The only thing working in Assad’s favor is that the rebels could turn on each other on a large enough scale to prevent progress against Assad.
AP: Appeals court upholds nearly $1.3 billion Sandy Hook verdict against Alex Jones
The appeals court cut a secondary penalty of $150 million but upheld the $1 billion primary damages. Jones is sure to appeal again but it isn’t likely to work or get the court to stall the case now.
Axios: Lawmakers threaten to vote again on Gaetz report if he gets Trump job
This is a weird one but some Republicans are threatening that Congress could go public with the Gaetz report if he is giving a job anyplace in the Trump administration. They want him pushed out far enough they never have to see or deal with him again. Which really makes me wonder just how bad that report is but it may just be that Gaetz has literately no allies in Congress. Despite the short time he was there he just made a a group of people that don’t like him and a group of people who hate him.
Maryland historical society finally identifies 100-year-old mystery machine
All that ass-kissing and none of them got a post in the Trump administration.
.http://youtube.com/post/UgkxSyCDhqtBR8SzjpPrdy0OKI1BBKu7ltOq
Their Black jobs were taken (but not by immigrants).
Giant Buffalo Asks For Cuddles Every Day | Cuddle Buddies
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=qfYGf9DCu2Q
NYPD found a backpack they believe was worn by the suspect in the Brian Thompson shooting
South Korea’s Yoon survives martial law impeachment move after his party boycotts vote
@499. birgerjohansson : “Yes, I know Portugal does not have siesta.”
I did NOT know that. I’d have figured they’d have something similar if they hadn’t adopted it from their neighbours.
(Aussie here who has never been to either nation.)
How Much Do I Need to Change My Face to Avoid Facial Recognition?
Trump Orbiter and White Nationalist Influencer Nick Fuentes Charged with Battery
Lesson: if you video something for legal purposes, it should stream the video immediately to another site, not leave it on the camera.
Alternative healer from California gets 10 years in U.K. prison for death of woman at “slapping therapy” workshop
Life Began Much Faster Than We Thought
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=wHWKfa7PdOE
America’s Lonely Future: David Frum on Trump’s “Predatory” Foreign Policy
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=nIeUigGZktk
Yes, I am aware of Frum’s association with Dubya. Yet, he is one of the few conservatives that refuse to drink the Kool-Aid.
Link.
Video at the link.
Link
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/december-5-2024
Commentary:
Link
Marc Elias:
Amy Siskind:
https://www.facebook.com/amy.siskind
Scott Dworkin
Jennifer Rubin:
Suddenly, Trump’s Ugliest Threats Are Facing Surprise GOP Resistance
NIKON comedy wildlife awards
McMahon’s misconduct allegations concern advocates for student safety
Followup to comment 239.
Posted by a reader of the article:
Link
Link
It really irks me to see Trump pretending to already be president, but I suppose that is unavoidable.
Alex, I’ll take ‘Obvious Questions’ for $200.
Taylor Swift: As the Eras Tour bows out, what will she do next?
1) Pause to count her money
2) Attend a few football games
Chicago School Kid Discovers New Cancer-Fighting Compound in Bird Poop
Weird Xmas traditions
“History of the Yule Goat | Scandinavian History | Extra History”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=noY9iXUHJfM
@94, 226
Suspect’s backpack had Monopoly money
Teen charged for allegedly poisoning classmate’s goat at Vista Ridge High
Giant fossil seeds from Borneo record ancient plant migration
Democrats and Republicans in Congress worried that Gabbard might leak information to Syria
That could be a moot point soon.
Re: Reginald Selkirk @ #249…
Congresscritters should be more concerned that she’d leak information to the Russians.
Syrian rebels seize Damascus; Assad reportedly flees capital
The location of Syrian President Bashad al-Assad was not immediately known.
Video is available at the link.
Monopoly money … symbolic in some way?
Lynna, OM@251,
The speed with which Assad’s regime disintegrated has taken everyone by surprise – including those who overthrew it, it seems. It’s hard to be optimistic about a peaceful transition, or one to anything like democracy, given that HTS and its leader (who are playing nice at present) were until 2017 affiliated to al-Qaeda, and the likelihood of continuing meddling by outside forces (Russia, Turkey, Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia, UAE…). With regard to Russia, a key issue is whether Putin will try to hang on to the Russian military bases: Hmeimim airbase in Syria’s Latakia province and the naval facility at Tartous on the coast. These, I believe, are in the one part of Syria which might remain loyal to Assad (or might have, if he hadn’t apparently fled the country), as it’s principally inhabited by members of his Alawite sect. My guess is that Putin will try to come to terms with HTS to keep the bases in return for supporting the new regime. Turkey’s Erdoğan will be even keener than before to slaughter Kurds and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces – which Trump is likely to abandon. Netanyahu will be delighted at present as Assad’s overthrow is a severe blow to Iran and Hezbollah, but could easily find himself facing a more aggressive Syria – Assad tried to avoid direct confrontation with Israel.
Here’s the Guardian’s Syria liveblog from last night and this morning. It was quite something to follow in real time! I had to return to news coverage this week. While I hadn’t planned to do it exactly one month after the election, there was too much happening – Syria, South Korea, Romania, Georgia, France,…!
Anyway, I hope everyone here has been OK! I’ve been thinking of joining Bluesky… I likely will, but I would be interested to hear people’s experiences or cautions.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Syria liveblog. It’s wild that it’s 2024 and there’s no clarity on where Assad is or if he’s still alive.
South Korea arrests ex-defence minister after failed martial law attempt
This won’t be cleared up until Yoon is gone – either resignation or impeachment.
Cartoon: Kash Patel’s FBI list
Romania: Tim Ross and Andrei Popoviciu of POLITICO Europe explain why Romania’s Constitutional Court has abruptly canceled Romania’s presidential election.
Netanyahu taking advantage of the situation:
Text is quoted from the New York Times.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/12/08/world/syria-war-damascus
JFC, more of this crap: Trump details sweeping changes he’ll carry out on day one and beyond in an exclusive interview
Trump vowed to launch a mass deportation effort, impose tariffs and pardon many convicted in the Jan. 6 attack in an interview with “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker.
Video at the link.
Trump is a liar, and he changes his mind about policy goals every other day, so who knows what he will do and what he won’t do. He does seem to be more consistent when it comes to immigration … and that’s bad news.
The Seoul branch of the Star Wars Resistance demands the impeachment of South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol.
GMOs could reboot chestnut trees
Covers several important developments in American chestnut tree restoration:
American Castanea, a “public benefit corporation” startup
Breadtree Farms, a company hoping to process chestnuts
The “DarWin” GMO trees
Followup to comment 260.
To reply to just one of the deeply ignorant things Trump said in that interview: he claimed that no other countries confer birthright citizenship.
33 nations have birthright citizenship.
More at the link.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries-with-birthright-citizenship
https://www.wonkette.com/p/fascist-jokes-about-annexing-nato
“Fascist ‘Jokes’ About Annexing NATO Ally”
“And everyone laughed and laughed.”
Washington Post link
NBC News:
New York Times link
“She Revolutionized Medicine. Why Isn’t She a Household Name?”
MSN: Watching with trepidation and glee, Netanyahu orders military to seize Syria buffer zone
Israel is using the collapse of Assad’s rule to grab Syrian territory. With no government in Syria nobody is defending it’s borders and any new government isn’t going to be in a position to do anything about this.
Storm Darragh has caused much damage in Britain.
Capel Curig in north Wales recorded wind speeds of 96mph on Saturday,
time travel #shorts.
.https://youtube.com/shorts/Lnv-jKmB6RU
I would like the second future, but we deserve the first future.
I was searching for responses to the Orange Sphincter’s invasion of Notre Dame. I was aghast at the mealy-mouthed sphincter kissing headlines by the main-slime news articles
The video of his thug-like handshake with Macron the Chameleon made me cringe (due to the actions of both of them).
I’d be interested to read the comments by the thoughtful people here.
Also, I read that putin abandoned Al-Assad and Syria because they didn’t want to pull resources from their rape and pillage of Ukraine. Anotherarticle said that Syria finally had a successful ‘arab spring’ after years of trying.
The world is insane:
https://www.salon.com/2024/12/06/ushers-in-a-christian-deep-state-maga-moves-to-gut-the-constitution/
OR
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/amanda-marcotte/112360/trump-ushers-in-a-christian-deep-state-maga-moves-to-gut-the-constitution
Trump Ushers In a Christian “Deep State”: MAGA Moves To Gut the Constitution
by Amanda Marcotte | December 8, 2024
The new xtian terrorist plans to implement the New Dark Ages are scary.
Terry Talks Movies:
“These Movies Are Sure To Challenge Everyone!”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=VK2Xvw3krrg&si=0M90npKIWzgdSCBQ
“Keeper Of the Flame” from 1943 with Spencer Tracy/ Hepburn is extremely relevant for the current American political situation.
“I Saw the TV Glow” is weird, with a trans element.
“Heretic” with evil Hugh Grant reveals the One True Religion. The end can be interpreted two ways (but in both, the surviving victims are likely to get saved).
“My Old Ass.” Elder protagonist time travels to younger protagonist: “avoid anyone named Chad”.
Link
Fact-checking Trump’s interview with ‘Meet the Press’
SNL Weekend Update 12/7/24 | Saturday Night Live Dec 7, 2024
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=Rzs5_wcE9J0
“The Fall of Assad’s Syria”
New Yorker link
John Lennon left us on this dsy 1980.
‘It’s an old person’s drink.’ Is Britain’s love for tea cooling off?
Origin of a name.
#1 What does TRUMP mean in German? Other name before 1680. LOL
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=AgxkcLvT8_A
.
#2 Donald Trump surname was different until 1695: S**T*ER. John Oliver FAIL.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=zLZheZ59lr8
I knew Shicklgruber was associated with Hitler, but this is even better.
@271 shermanj:
In the previous large scale support of Assad the Russian supplies included Russian special forces, Russian mercenaries, air strikes and large amounts of arms and equipment. They are short of everything for their own war in Ukraine. They couldn’t support Assad without pulling forces off the front line in Ukraine and Ukraine would quickly be told by US/EU intelligence what had happened.
Potentially Russia could have sent some planes for air support. They have been holding back in Ukraine because they don’t want to risk their planes against Ukraine’s US and NATO provided air defense. The rebels in Syria don’t have any air or good air defense so the Russian planes have nearly free reign. But some planes making air strikes are not going to help in the face of a general army collapse. They might even have been doing so, I don’t see any confirmation either way.
Iran did continue to back Assad as long as it looked like he could hold on. But Iran can’t send soldiers or supplies on a large scale, they just don’t have the money and a bunch of their supplies have been sent to Russia.
Why did Jack the Ripper Stop?
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=-yv4bQyXsqI
More lawsuits are barreling toward Trump over Jan. 6
NB
“Trump’s victory keeps SHRIVELING to TINY 1.4%”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=JVCtvy1eORg
Disqualifying people from having an opinion on a subject???
.https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1CyzEjjDCP/
Anyone else finding lately that they get a 404 virtually 100% of the time now when trying to get the cached version of a site that’s down? It was never perfectly reliable but I don’t think I’ve had a cache: link DTRT in literally months now. Not a single time in months.
Re: SC @254:
I collected assessments of Bluesky under PZ’s Mastodon post (18+20, 28, 29).
They made a Twitter clone. By design, it can’t be meaningfully decentralized. They’re understaffed for maintenance and moderation, and swimming in venture capital. Enshittification is very likely. For the moment, folks say it feels like Twitter.
Oh, and I’ve heard Bluesky’s not accessible to screen readers at all: no hierarchical structure to navigate the text and buttons on the screen. Mastodon’s official client is less bad at accessibility (still not great), so blind users turn to 3rd-party clients that do it better.
Bitcoin miner purchases 112-megawatt
In the long run I expect this ends up back on the grid someplace but that this seems like a good idea at all is fairly absurd.
Re: Bekenstein Bound @285:
What cache service are you referring to? And of what site?
Wayback and Archive.today (the two-letter suffix one) have been working for me lately. Google cache is long gone; I heard they linked Wayback instead somewhere, but I haven’t seen it. Yandex has a cache. Are you saying the cache service you tried was itself down, 404-ing before it could offer to retrieve an archived page?
On-scalp printing of personalized electroencephalography e-tattoos
Video of e-tattoo printing (1:58)
“Trump CRASHES AND BURNS in nightmare interview”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=CL86oHEYl7c
My question is: Is Trump just fooling his low-information voters, or does he really believe that OTHER countries will be paying the US tariffs?
“Republicans Working Overtime to HIDE WOMEN’S DEATHS FROM PUBLIC!!!”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=_iUsupDKijQ
Is anyone surprised?
New pneumonia vaccine guidelines could save more people
Something to cheer you up in a bad time.
BRITISH MUM REACTS | Family Guy – British Jokes
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=QgtrLz3ak7k
I think Peter wanted the queen’s hair for a DNA comparison. PS most Brits have (slightly) better teeth !
Corruption as usual
Saudi Arabia’s 2034 World Cup bid to be ratified by Fifa despite rights violations | World Cup | The Guardian
.https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/dec/09/saudi-arabia-2034-world-cup-bid-fifa-human-rights-violations-migrant-workers
Microsoft: Another Chinese cyberspy crew targeting US critical orgs ‘as of yesterday’
Laser-etched mangoes provide product information on fruit’s skin
Health insurance? This comic is from 2020.
.https://www.facebook.com/share/16vYxFYXgG/
Latest James Webb data hints at new physics in Universe’s expansion
@291 birgerjohansson: It’s also possible that Trump thinks corporate public policy statements are as trustworthy as his public policy statements. So he doesn’t take them seriously when they say they are going to raise prices.
The actress Dame Judi Dench turns 90 today. A.much nicer old Brit* than that mean media magnate which I refuse to name.
* yes, I know he came from Australia. So did Immortan Joe.
“Trump Officially Announces Plans To ‘Change’ US Elections”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=e36wusJQZVM
For reasons explained in the link, this is likely to bite Trump in the ass.
Source : https://scitechdaily.com/extremely-rare-researchers-discover-extraordinary-tiny-insect-fossils-in-new-zealand/
“YIKES! Trump ADMITS he Lied to Voters…Breaks EVERY Promise”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=NzZC6zuJPb4
.
“Incoherent Tommy Tuberville Says Its ‘Not Our Job’ To Vet Trump’s Cabinet Nominees”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=Krqd1Nkj188
Followup to Reginald @282.
Link
Before the election, the Republican sold an incredible amount of Trump-branded merchandise. After the election, Donald Trump is still at it.
Followup to comments 260 and 274.
Link
I prefer the phrase “protective pardons.”
Followup to comment 307.
More bits of news from the same source:
Link
The Forgotten Mammal Empire That Came Before Dinosaurs
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=5eM_eeYpB44
Followup to comment 264, also comments 260 and 274.
Link
Video snippets are available at the link.
Cartoon: The kakistocracy
Mysterious Language Etched Onto Newly Discovered Ancient Tablet
Or, it could be a fake.
Missouri Has The Most Dangerous Traffic Laws In The U.S.
American Arrested For Bringing Golden Handgun To Clown School Sentenced To A Year In Australian Jail
https://www.wonkette.com/p/heritage-foundation-plan-to-fight
“Heritage Foundation Plan To Fight Antisemitism Has Hilariously Ironic Problem”
“If your plan to fight antisemitism is itself antisemitic, you might have lost the plot.”
UnitedHealthcare CEO shooting latest: Man held for questioning in Pennsylvania, sources say
Joe Biden is the first president to register job growth over every single month of his term but he is getting no credit.
.http://youtube.com/post/UgkxwCheP0Hd-1tm2KbCzu2jxiyTUy7Sz-QF
Live updates: Man questioned in UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson killing had gun, silencer, fake ID
“The man is being questioned in Altoona, Pennsylvania, and had a gun similar to the one used in the shooting, sources tell NBC News.”
For the second time since the court ended the consideration of race in college admissions, the justices declined to hear a case challenging a program aimed at bolstering diversity in public schools.
Charge train-size batteries with clean energy, roll them to power Denver: SunTrain says it’s the “crazy” future
Cadbury-owner Mondelez exploring Hershey acquisition, Bloomberg News reports
The latest reporting on Trump’s personnel screening process — including the questions and who’s asking them — is quite unsettling.
Polygamous leader with 20 ‘wives’ faces sentencing for criminal sex acts with kids
@ 316, 318
UnitedHealthcare CEO shooting latest: Person of interest Luigi Mangione under arrest
Senators propose amendment on term limits for supreme court justices – US politics live
Formulating it as a constitutional amendment means it will be very difficult to get it implemented.
A squid-inspired medical device could reduce the need for needles
We know this just had to happen sooner or later:
https://crooksandliars.com/2024/12/ai-jesus-now-thing
Trump and his lawyers hoped the Supreme Court would intervene to lift a gag order in his New York criminal case. That didn’t exactly work out for him.
Good news.
Josh Marshall:
Link.
More at the link.
Cartoon: As the dust begins to settle
Link
FFS.
Followup to comment 306.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/here-comes-the-old-republican-bitcoin
“Here Comes The Old Republican Bitcoin Pump And Dump!”
“Republican Senator Cynthia Lummis has a bill to make some government Bitcoin reserves, WCGW?”
Re: Lynna, OM @ #332…
If you can “become Trump” in the game, does that mean that one of things you can buy–or otherwise obtain–are cheat codes?
Apple hit with $1.2B lawsuit after killing controversial CSAM-detecting tool
whheydt @334. I don’t know. It’s a good question. Maybe your character in the game turns orange and gives off a bad odor?
NBC News:
Also from NBC News:
New York Times:
Convoluted reasoning. Will have to wait for more developments regarding this developing story.
WTF!!?
LA Times:
Another House Republican Is Being Loud And Clear About Plans To Slash Medicare
Fox News finds a way to get even more icky
I see Trump taking advantage of the fact that Jill Biden is polite, and of the fact that Macron’s wife was temporarily absent from her seat between Trump and Jill Biden. I give Jill Biden kudos for managing to look like she was not cringing as Trump leans toward her.
Posted by readers of the article:
[CW]: GOP Congresswoman Nancy Mace is caught on video in gross act with two women and a man
‘Top 10 Countries Where Black People Are Not Welcomed | A Must-Watch for Black Travellers.’
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=4tlJI0Q0jyY
Neat. I stumbled on a comment formatting trick. Markdown links.
[label](url “optional hover text”)
They’re equivelent to “a href= title=” tags.
To make the formula visible, I put a backslash before the left bracket. The blog being clever like this means square brackets may behave strangely and require a backslash if you intend something else.
Trickier still are reference-style links. You bracket up [some text][1] with a citation number. Then devote a line at the bottom to set its url and hover text.
[1]: url “hover text”
It liooks like this: some text
I discovered all this as I naively tried to write CW in brackets with a colon, and my whole line disappeared from the comment preview, until I backslashed it.
A lesser disappearance occurs if you start a line with hyphen or asterisk or 1. 2. 3., which would be markdown lists, but do nothing here. I’ve known about for a while as a pitfall; never got em to work. Might be forbidden like embedded images.
Markdown is why asterisks around words become italic or bold. None of this Markdown formatting works within html blockquote tags. Markdown blockquoting allows it, but that method is tedious.
It’s not a syntax I like for commenting, but it helps to know why things break.
Prepending “cache:” to the stuck-spinning URL is what seems to have become extremely unreliable.
Meanwhile, we’re getting Star Trek’s hyposprays and Pandora’s Star’s OCTattoos? Cool!
Re: Bekenstein Bound @345:
Oh, the google search operator (cache:someurl).
Google Won’t Let You View Cached Web Pages Anymore (But You Still Can) (2024-02)
Google Search completely kills the cache feature (2024-09)
* Via a link there: I found Google’s Wayback link. They buried it. Triple-dot a search result, sidebar’s “more about this page” button, scroll to the borrom, “See previous versions on Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine”. Not worth the effort getting to it.
Taylor Swift Awards Eras Tour Crew With $197 Million in Bonuses
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/electoral-colleges-future-maybe-democrats-call-trumps-bluff-rcna183602“>On the Electoral College’s future, maybe Democrats should call Trump’s bluff
AIs Predict Research Results Without Doing Research
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=Qgrl3JSWWDE
Cartoon: The deportations begin
Paul Krugman announces his retirement from The New York Times and reflects on the past 25 years:
BBC:
A lot of observers are worried about chemical weapons and other weapons falling into the hands of extremists.
“Jon Stewart on Assad Regime’s End in Syria & Trump’s Pre-Presidential Europe Visit”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=0SVPClCPKc8
Andrea Rizzi of El País in English offers analysis of how interconnected geopolitical crises brought about the fall of Bashar al-Assad.
Grifting:
Link
Volodymyr Zelenskyy:
https://x.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1866468214672064956
Images at the link.
Images and text also available here.
Luigi Mangione is from an ultra-rich ultra right wing family
Posted by readers of the article:
Microsoft Unveils Zero-Water Data Centers To Reduce AI Climate Impact
… until the robot takeover is complete.
Researchers develop memory that functions with temperatures over 1,100°F — nonvolatile electrochemical memory works even on the hottest planet in our solar system
https://www.wonkette.com/p/tulsi-gabbard-had-a-big-day-in-washington
“Tulsi Gabbard Had A Big Day In Washington While Her Bud Assad Was Fleeing To Moscow”
“Just a normal Monday for the incoming Trump regime.”
Syria’s Assad is in Russia, Putin’s deputy foreign minister confirms to NBC News
Link
Support for the ACA climbs, but Republican-imposed hurdles remain
“The good news for health care advocates is that the Affordable Care Act’s popularity is still growing. There is, however, some less-than-good news.”
In case Mango Mussolini makes things unendurable, here is some useful stuff to know.
The Netherlands and Sweden are the two non-anglophone countries where people have the best english skills, so you can probably get along fine there.
And here is more detailed stuff.
“5 Things That Shocked Me About Moving To Sweden… 6 Years Later”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=0J0A3E-u3Mk
Rupert Murdoch loses bid in real-life ‘Succession’ battle with family | BBC
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=6_9Tq-YsPjk
That interconnectedness is itself worrying, irrespective of the parties involved in the various “upheavals”: it was such interconnectedness that enabled the assassination of an archduke trigger WW1.
United Healthcare CEO Killer Had DEBILITATING Back Pain, Raged at Health Insurance Abusing Americans
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=ILBJhtz42zw
If Bashar al-Assad wasn’t an extremist (he did, after all, actually use chemical weapons against his own people), that label has no meaning. Sure, the record of the apparent leader of the new rulers is hardly reassuring, and the prospects for peace and freedom in Syria are less than rosy, but I’m actually more worried about the rogue state that feels entitled to launch an undeclared war involving both heavy bombing and actual invasion against a neighbouring state while it is at its weakest – and that rogue state has a leader drunk with military success, desperate to abort his trial for corruption, and possesses nuclear weapons.
Re: Lynna @357:
Dean Burnett, a neuroscientist:
KG @368, good points. BTW, I did not mean to imply Assad was a moderate! He was a war criminal and an extremist.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain@369, “maturing at different rates” is a good point.
In other news, ‘He’s got no facts to give’: Watch Jimmy Kimmel have some fun with Trump
Excerpts:
“All 50 Countries in EUROPE Ranked WORST to BEST”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=Uvd-dGZ6PYM
I was surprised by Ireland. As for the Meh ranking of the UK, thank you Boris Johnson and David Cameron. BTW Malta is an arabic-speaking catholic country. Go figure.
Iceland: damper and colder than Britain, but great scenery.
The maker also has a ranking of US states but I have not gone there. Some places are more depressing than post-Brexit Britain.
Newsweek: Russia Hits China With Trade Tariffs
Weirdly specific and narrow tariff. It could be a trial for more tariffs the government is planning, to see how China responds. It could simply be a move to get some Yuan, which would be handy for buying other things from China. It could be an attempt to move some industry back to Russia.
In any case it’s a good sign of just how fragile the alliance between China and Russia is. Both sides want to leverage the alliance to their advantage but both sides need each other too much to blow it up entirely.
Reuters: Russian central bank intervenes as rouble tumbles past 110 to the dollar
Not surprisingly the ruble is in rough shape. The important thing is that the Russian central bank has gone beyond run of the mill moves to shore it up to desperation moves to keep it from falling too far. Stopping currency purchases by the central bank is essentially freezing it’s international price by stopping international trade. It will stabilize the internal market a bit over the short term but it’s just pasting over problems. Russia had been propping it up using money from it’s sovereign wealth fund. They either think that won’t work or they are starting to run out.
US loans Ukraine $20 billion from seized Russian assets
Even Muslims Aren’t Safe Under Sharia
.https://youtube.com/shorts/KRIp8UDnXUE
@354 Lynna OM
Repo Man
What is rage-baiting and why is it profitable?
Toronto artist creates Loser Lane an unwinnable video game to protest bike lane removal
Killer Ghost Shrimp: Scientists Discover a New Predator Lurking in the Atacama Trench
Star Trek Fan Gets Thousands Of Dollars In Tickets Because Of Old USS Enterprise License Plate
Every Black Person Needs A Few White Friends. Drew Thomas
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=bUYUSXyp3Pg
Google says its new quantum chip indicates that multiple universes exist
Re: birgerjohansson @375:
Strange subtext for that title. Like, Sharia’s not for rounding up tourists. Adhering to the ‘proper’ sect doesn’t spare citizens from the life-worsening fallout of theocracy. That’s something the Taliban has long been famous for making obvious.
Ah. That’s a propaganda channel. Description: “This is a Christian debate clips channel dedicated to dispelling the lies of islam and the pagan false prophet muhammad”
The clip, however, is from The Breadwinner (2017), an Irish animated film produced by Angelina Jolie. It’s about an 11-year-old—in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan at the start of the War on Terror—who dresses as a boy to evade gender-restrictions that prevented her from working to provide for her family, in the wake of her father’s unjust arrest (incited in the clip). Wikipedia says it got excellent reviews, including from Afghan women activists.
Bits and pieces of news, as summarized by Steve Benen:
Trump lawyers and aide face additional felony charges in Wisconsin over 2020 fake electors
What?? They can’t do that! That breaks basic functionality of browsers and of the web!
How do I force them to put it back the way it was?
Birgerjohansson@372,
Maltese is not Arabic, although it is “a Semitic language derived from late medieval Sicilian Arabic with Romance superstrata”. It’s not mutually intelligible with Arabic, and more of its vocabulary is derived from Italian and Sicilian than from Arabic, while some is also taken from English (it was ruled by the UK between 1800 and 1964, and I’ve read somewhere the possibility of it becoming part of the UK was discussed).
Ominous news from eastern Syria:
Recommended
“Michael Kosta on UHC CEO Shooting Suspect Luigi Mangione | The Daily Show”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ickf4gcCWa8
South Korea police try to raid Yoon’s office over martial law
Deadly virus samples went missing from lab in ‘major biosecurity breach,’ say authorities
Reuters: Russia close to achieving goals in Ukraine war, Putin’s spy chief says
It’s easy to see where this is going. Russia declares victory and stops advancing without giving up any territory. They either don’t negotiate, stall negotiations indefinitely or use Trump to leverage Ukraine into an abusive settlement. Most likely stalling because they don’t want Ukraine to join NATO or sign any defense treaties while Ukraine probably won’t agree to anything bad as long as they have EU support. This leaves open the door for Russia to restart the offense later once they rebuilt the military.
It is not George Soros that is the problem
.http://youtube.com/post/UgkxNhF3DtSjb0Rl7Q1dKcqUKE6RkJGs-DHX
Some prominent Trump administration voices, including some who worked with Kash Patel directly, are balking at the idea that he should lead the FBI.
The latest in poker cheats: Tiny cameras that can see cards as they’re dealt
Beware Of Trump’s Coming Purge Of The U.S. Military
Trump Judge Questions If Airlifts Under Idaho Abortion Ban Are Really About Mother Who ‘Wants To Kill The Baby’
Link
Trump ships Don Jr.’s fiancee to Greece amid cheating rumors
Yesterday, I wrote,
Our organization condemns violence. However, emotionally, knowing first hand, how murderous insurance companies are, I felt no sorrow over the death of the uhc ceo.
More importantly, the mainslime media has devoted hundreds of hours of insipid reporting on the Luigi Mangione uhc ceo story.
However, if it weren’t a rich, powerful insurance company ceo and was just some ‘average’ person that was shot and died, we probably wouldn’t even hear about it!
I hope many here will read this before the infinite thread rolls over again.
Daily Kos reporting: I’m ROFLMAO: the magat in chief saying any of his appointees are ‘“supremely qualified” for the job.’ is scary/funny.
David Rothkopf/Need to Know [from Rothkopf’s substack]
“Why Syria Matters to You”
On MSNBC, Richard Engel pointed out that, right up until he was forced out of Syria, Assad was still building new palaces and renovating older ones. Assad was caught by surprise.
Michael A Cohen/Truth and Consequences:
“Let Freedom Ring”
Marwan Kabalon/Al Jazeera:
House Republicans want to make filing taxes harder and more expensive
Link
Followup to comment 404.
Tom Cotton derails bipartisan PRESS Act for all the wrong reasons
“The Arkansas Republican’s explanation for rejecting the PRESS Act was so absurd, it seems implausible that the senator actually believed it.”
The problem(s) with Trump vowing to waive environmental laws for big investors
“Elon Musk thinks Donald Trump’s idea about waiving environmental safeguards for billion-dollar investors is “awesome.” That’s ridiculous.”
The Onion’s acquisition of Infowars was blocked by a judge
House GOP Uses Must-Pass Defense Bill To Strip Care From Military Families’ Trans Kids
“A provision tucked into the National Defense Authorization Act forces parents in the military to weigh their careers against providing health care for loved ones.”
Criticism of Hegseth reportedly banned on Newsmax after Trump whines
https://www.wonkette.com/p/maxine-waters-assaults-nancy-mace
“Maxine Waters Assaults Nancy Mace, Except Not Maxine Waters And Not Assault”
“Mace had a pro-trans foster-care-youth activist arrested for shaking her hand.”
The Register: Open source maintainers are drowning in junk bug reports written by AI
People are using AI tools to scan the code and then reporting the output without really checking it first. Some of these are good faith attempts to check the code that are not paying enough attention and some are attempts to pump up resumes by getting to list finding significant Linux bugs.
If your using an AI bug finder to analyze the code, check the output and if you can’t demonstrate or explain how it’s a problem then don’t report it. LLMs can hallucinate issues out of nothing and it just fills up the maintainers time with non-issues.
Followup to comments 324, 357, 389, and 400.
Link
I appreciate @412 Lynna providing a clearer picture. But, things are not as clear as the mainslime news often presents it:
NBC news reported, “He’s driven by ideology and not necessarily a direct, personal beef with his targeted victim,” Figliuzzi said today on MSNBC’s “Ana Cabrera Reports.”
However, that is merely ‘mind reader’ conjecture by Figliuzzi, I have read additional articles that may point to a ‘direct, personal beef’. They showed an X-ray supposed to be of Mangione’s back held together with metal screws and that he was often had horrible back pain. So, it would be important to know if he had medical treatment denied by an insurance company. However, that is still not justification for killing.
There are other obvious problems with ‘popular opinions’ about killing. Many magats have expressed they want Mangione dead. He allegedly killed the murderous uhc ceo. But, a subway vigilante who held a disruptive homeless man in a choke hold until he was dead was acquitted by a jury and the magats rejoice. The vigilante was trained to use as that hold as a lethal weapon. I think we need to see things with greater perspective and seek more equitable justice in this society.
Why has Elon Musk joined Trump in meetings with foreign leaders?
“[Trump] having discussions with foreign leaders makes sense. Elon Musk joining those conversations does not.”
FBI Director Chris Wray resigning amid pressure from Trump
“Trump had repeatedly indicated he would fire him if he didn’t step down.”
Link
Same link as in comment 416.
Followup to comment 398.
Good news, for now: North Carolina elections board denies GOP effort to toss 60,000 votes in close state Supreme Court race
“The board’s ruling means Democrat Allison Riggs maintains her narrow advantage over Republican Jefferson Griffin, who may appeal the decision, in the battleground state contest.”
When Republicans say “social security is seven years from going bankrupt”
.http://youtube.com/post/UgkxMvK3UYC9qLSwT9_mzPJXwVqyDKPDFqKr
Trump plans to scrap policy restricting ICE arrests at churches, schools and hospitals
“The long-standing policy has prevented ICE agents from arresting immigrants at so-called ‘sensitive locations’ except under certain circumstances.”
New Magnetic Flow Has Potential To Revolutionise Electronic Devices
Malibu residents under ‘blowtorch’ of growing Franklin Fire
Entertainer and mentalist The Amazing Kreskin dead at 89